Hello friends, a very warm welcome to a new series of life testimony, My Hand in His – a journey of faith with the living God. This is a heart-warming account of God working in the life of a man who grew up in a staunch Taoist home and whose grandfather was a medium.

Many life stories are written by someone else. But David Lim chose to write his own story. He vividly and clearly recounted his life from young and how God called him “out of darkness into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2: 9) and shaped him as he walked faithfully. David said, “When Christians realise that their experiences, good or bad, are not mere coincidences but rather divine appointments, they can live confidently, knowing that God has ordained them to accomplish His purpose in their lives”. This, of course, made his life testimony so unlike others which touched, inspired and impacted readers. We pray that David’s story will encourage, challenge and bless you as well.

The Birth

David was born on 5 April 1951 and named Lim Kian Boon. His family and neighbours never called him Kian Boon or Ah Boon since young. Instead, they called him Babi, which means ‘pig’ in the Malay language. Pig? Why call a boy as an animal??

Well, in the olden days, traditional Chinese families believed that naming a boy after an animal would make him repulsive to evil spirits. That would stop them from attacking or abducting the boy. In fact, some male children were even made to wear earrings because that would supposedly deceive evil spirits from harming him. The Chinese culture strongly emphasizes on the importance of having male successors. Daughters, on the other hand, are considered an outsider when they get married. A male heir is important for the continuance of ancestor worships and the expansion of the family tree. For that reason, a male child wearing earrings in the old days was an attempt to deceive the female spirits who seek to terminate all the male offsprings in the family. Fortunately, David was not made to wear earrings.

David attended the Daily Vacation Bible School in a church where he called himself David when the registrar asked for his name. He did not know the significance of the name then. At that time, Singapore was under the British colonial rule and it was cool to have an English name. But changing his name from Babi to David did not help much because his uneducated mother could not pronounce ‘David’ properly. She ended up calling him Lebbit, which actually sounds like ‘rabbit’. So, David still got a name derived from an animal!

Ghosts and Spirits

Growing up in a Taoist home, superstitions and taboos controlled David’s family over everything they did. They governed childbirth, marriage, funerals, table manners, speech, colour, clothing and many other things. The fear of violating the ‘rules’ unintentionally troubled David for years.

From an early age, David’s parents warned the children in the family not to use a broom to beat anyone or for any other purpose. Broom is meant to sweep the floor only. A person beaten by a broom would have bad luck for years. Nonetheless, by rubbing the part of the body that had contact with the broom several times, or by uttering “touch wood”, the curse could be reversed. And, no one sweeps the floor during Chinese New Year because of the fear of sweeping away their luck.

It was also a taboo to trim one’s fingernails or toenails at night. Those who did so could be visited by spirits of the dead. And David’s mother used to say during dinner time, “never waste even a grain of rice, otherwise you will have a pockmarked wife”.

There was also a belief that wicked spirits inhabited knives and others sharp tools and their craving for human blood may cause tragedies. Pointing a knife at someone could actually result in a stabbing incident if the evil spirit provoked the knife-wielder.

The word ‘death’ is also a taboo and people avoid even uttering it. They also avoid having four of an item or four on number tags. Many buildings do not have a fourth floor as the word ‘four’ sounds like ‘death’ in Cantonese dialect. Apart from that, feng shui is very important too. If an apartment unit is in a convenient location and has a good feng shui, buyers could still reject it if the unit number consisted of 4. Furthermore, 1314 is definitely a bad one as the Cantonese for that sounds like ‘one live, the other dies’. As you can see, superstitions over numbers affect many important decisions, even today.

Once David told his grandmother, “my eyelids fluttered just now”. She cautioned him, “Bee-ah (a short form of Babi), you better not step out of the house today, or else you will surely fight with someone”. That day, David stayed home obediently.

David also recalled that his grandmother had never left home without consulting the Chinese Almanac. This yearbook directed her life and every action. She influenced David’s mother and passed it down even to David’s second sister, Alice.

In the traditional Chinese faith, gods and spirits co-exist. Huh… so how did god and spirits co-exist?

To prevent the dead from creating trouble for the family of the deceased, funeral rituals must be meticulously carried out. Failing to do so would enrage spirits from the nether world and they would bring misfortune and death in the family. So, families regularly make offerings on the fifteenth of each month of the lunar calendar to the gods and ancestors to ensure their blessings.

The seventh month of the lunar calendar is known as the Hungry Ghosts festival where no one should stay up or linger around at night. People basically believe that wandering spirits that have been abandoned by their families are released from hell for a month. Therefore, there are many reports of ghost sightings so sacrifices are offered to these paranormal visitors to appease them.

Superstitions dominated David and his family’s life. As a child, David felt helpless and powerless to cope with superstitions and taboos. The fear of death, ghosts and bad luck caused him much anguish before he came to know Christ.

David said that his mother often took him along to visit various temples all over Singapore when he was very young. Whenever she was told that praying to the deities in a particular temple ensured answered prayers, she would go there regardless of the distance. Consequently, most of his outings as a young boy consisted of going to temples.

A Trip to the Temple

A pre-dawn visit to a temple at Waterloo Street left a deep impression on David even after five decades had passed.

David’s mother informed him about the trip the night before and told him that he had to wake up at five the next morning. She woke up at about 4 am to make a Chinese traditional glutinous rice cakes as an offering to the Goddess of Mercy. Back then, they were staying in a one-room house where the porch was also their living room, dining room and kitchen. David’s mother sat on the floor and prepared the rice cakes thoughtfully under the yellow light of a kerosene lamp which was placed on top of a one-kilogram milk-powder tin. She believed that offerings to the gods must be perfect: perfect ingredients, perfect flavour and perfect shape.

Once the moulding of each glutinous rice cake was laid onto a banana leaf, she placed them into a bamboo tray and steamed them in a wok. David once asked her, “Why don’t you buy them to save time instead of making them?” The gist of her answer was simply to save some money for a task she could manage herself. But most importantly, she believed hers tasted better than others.

David’s father, a compulsive gambler, passed away when David was 10 years old. As a result, he left nothing for the family to live on. Fortunately, he left no debt for David’s mother to clear! David’s mother was in her forties then. She did laundry for other families from early morning until late at night in order to keep her family going. She had no desire to re-marry. All she wanted was to give herself security and to provide for her children.

Steamed glutinous rice cakes were packed into a biscuit tin. Together with that, his mother already prepared some joss-sticks, candles, oranges, apples and spirit money for the temple sacrifice. It was convenient to buy all that from stalls at the temple but it would mean paying hard-earned money.

Both mother and son set out in the dark with cool morning air brushing their faces. Holding hands, they traced the familiar dark mud path to the main road and waited for a trishaw. David admired her gutsiness because she had no fear of darkness.

The journey to the temple on Waterloo Street took 30 minutes on a trishaw. He relaxed and enjoyed the crisp morning air with his mother in the one-seat trishaw. When they reached the temple, David saw hundreds of decorative lights lining both sides of the road, from one end to the other. There were stalls selling chrysanthemums, beverages, noodles, cakes, confectionery, fruits, spirit-money, candles, joss-sticks and many other things.

Upon entering into the temple, thick smoke from the incense sticks created a haze and filled the air that stung his eyes and nose. However, that did not bother David much because he had gotten used to the incense smoke in his grandfather’s temple. He saw a horde of devotees moving about and nudging one another inside. His mother led the way as they both jostled for places at a long sacrificial altar to place the offerings before the Goddess.

David remembered that there were three altars in the main hall with the Goddess in the centre. Devotees knelt in front of the altars lifting up bunches of burning incense sticks above their foreheads and uttering their secret wishes to the deities. The cacophony of noise drowned out their prayers and David could not hear a word of what they said. But when he grew older, he learnt that their invocations were mostly about striking it rich, coping with unfaithful husbands, prospering in business, healing of illnesses, success in their children’s education and careers and finding prospective husbands or wives for their unattached sons or daughters.

On the other hand, there were other devotees who held bamboo containers. Inside the containers are numbered fortune-telling sticks which are known in China as Chien Tung, a Chinese Oracle. After much shaking, a numbered stick would fall out from the bamboo container and an attendant would retrieve a slip of paper with the matching number. On the paper, there is a message that required an interpreter to explain the message or fortune from the deities.

That morning, there were hundreds of others earlier than them who already laid their offerings on the altar. David’s mother spied an empty spot and immediately took a plate from her paper bag and placed the cakes on it. She took a bundle of joss-sticks and touched the tips against the flame of a burning candle to light them. A devotee got up and David’s mother took her space and knelt before the altar. He saw his mother holding the bundle of joss-sticks with both hands and raised it over her head while simultaneously mumbling her wishes. Then, she handed him a few joss-sticks and told him to do the same.

A visit to the temple in the wee hour drew much attraction to David because he rarely gets to see such colourful scene outside the temple. In the eyes of a child, there were many things David could not understand. Please stay tuned for more exciting sharing.