In May 2024, Emma Stark (a prophetic voice from Scotland) gave a weighty word for Singapore for the years to come. It was a sober word because it sets the world in the years to come in great political and military tumult, a war-time footing and calamity. But Singapore has a central role to play amid this storm, and she says we need to pray for a greater degree of compassion to come into the place of our calling. We live in a crucial season and for all who love Singapore, it is a word that needs to be listened to, discerned and prayed about.
June 2024 musings: One of the words Emma Stark has for Singapore is the mediation role we will play in a tumultuous time for geopolitics. In a recent Asia House conversation between two former Foreign Ministers (George Yeo and Dr. Kyung-wha Kang) on US-China tensions, Taiwan, North Korea etc, George Yeo says something midway through the clip that moved me. Around the 34th minute of this dialogue, he recounts the meeting that Xi Jinping had with then-Taiwan’s President Ma Ying Jeou in 2015 in Singapore. That meeting was the first by the leaders of both sides of the Straits since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Singapore hosted. He says, of the role we played, “Singapore’s position is unique. It is not a position that any other country can easily take.” It reminded me of the sober word that Emma Stark had for us. Can Singapore indeed be a mediator and peacemaker, and provide the platforms for dialogue and the building of bridges?
Below: Xi Jinping and Ma Ying Jeou in a historic meeting in Singapore in 2015. Until then, the leaders of Taiwan and China had not met since 1949.