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Lucas Tang

Year 2 | Science

(back row, extreme right)

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August 16, 2018

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When I first entered NUS, I knew CSS was a place that I wanted to be at, but not exactly where I wanted to dedicate my time. It felt like just one of those checkboxes that I needed to tick off as part of my time here in university.


Heading into school, I felt I had good course mates whom I met through orientation camps, and good friends to talk to from my previous schools, but at the same time, I just couldn’t help but feel this very strong sense of loneliness. I think at the time what I was really struggling with was trying to find my place and belonging here in NUS. Sure, I had all these people to be with in university, but there was still a sadness and emptiness within me that I couldn’t shake. Something felt missing that needed to be filled.


A few weeks of school had gone by before I finally brought this up in prayer before the Lord. I still remember that day in the adoration room where I really asked him to help me with this struggle, because this wasn’t a feeling that I could bare having for the rest of my university life. But through His

goodness, I truly praise and thank Him for answering my prayers with the gift of CSS. Through them, He was able to shake and rid me of that sense of loneliness by giving me a place and people that I can belong to. Over the past year, the CSS community has been such a welcoming and wonderful place of friends, brothers and sisters, without whom the past year in NUS would have been much more meaningless.


Looking back, that emptiness could have been filled with many other things; maybe a new CCA, or

multiple new CCAs, hall life, work, or even nothing. But through God’s graces, He was able to fill it with

other people who were intentional about pursuing their faith and Jesus Christ. It did take me a while to warm up to everyone and everything, sure, but over time the people I met here are without a doubt the ones I feel most at home and comfortable with.


And it is because of people like these who will carry you through when the storms hit. There was a period in Year 1 where I was going through a rough patch and I felt very immobilised in terms of my faith and relationship with God. I didn’t know how to move forward from there. But just like the story of the paralytic man, where his friends had to physically carry and lift him to meet Jesus, my brothers in CSS did the same for me. It was during our Mid-Term Retreat where I brought this issue up to them and they were there to pray for me, bring me out of this struggle and move towards Jesus. Without them and without this community, I wouldn’t have been able to move on my own.


Over the past year in school, CSS had grown to become a very big part of my life. The people here are the ones I can count on and journey with, and they’re the ones I spend the most amount of time with, not because I have to, but because I want to. So, to all the incoming Year 1s, the Lord certainly has much in store for your journey here in NUS, and I genuinely hope you will let Him make CSS a part of that! There is more He can do indeed!

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