2019: A is for the Arctic and the Antarctica
By Sara, Aug 2019
I finally framed up the award-winning map which I bought online from a Japanese store last year.
The AuthaGraph World Map, created by Hajime Narukawa at Keio University’s Graduate School of Media and Governance in Tokyo, corrects distortions in the conventional Mercator projection because they are lined up straight across. By angling them in a way, it provides a more accurate representation of the distances between them.
“AuthaGraph faithfully represents all oceans [and] continents, including the neglected Antarctica,” according to the Good Design Awards, and provides “an advanced precise perspective of our planet.”
I love Geography. This map stoked my interest as it puts countries and continents in its actual shape and size.
Notice the size of Australia, (which incidentally A is also for Australia, where I am now, away from all the noise and distraction in the world) relative to the size of North America, Russia and China in this map below. Australia is a lot bigger than what traditional maps depict.
The Sad Phoenix
But do you see Antarctica?? Instead of a long big cloud that stretches across the bottom of the entire map, the real Antarctica is that beautiful, white figure on the bottom right!
Do you see it? When my eyes first saw it on this map, I heard the Lord say to me, “Sara, I am there. The Phoenix. That sad looking Phoenix which YY saw in 2015.”
The Lord has been telling us about the Phoenix to our team for some years now.
When I showed it to the team, they were so thrilled. But I also sense a foreboding of things to come. The Lord is looking at the rest of the world, feeling sad.
Led to Point at The Arctic
The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Alaska, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Northern Canada, Norway, Russia and Sweden.
I have a classmate from secondary school who have been inviting us to visit her in Russia, where her husband has been posted. When two of my classmates and myself finally agreed to go in 2018, she said it was too late as her husband has completed his contract and they were due to return to Singapore. But suddenly, the company extended his contract for another year. So, we decided we have to go, even though it is still bitterly cold in March, as that was the only time all of us could make it.
We never planned to go all the way up to Murmansk, the north most point of Russia, but because the airfares were much cheaper if we extended from a 10-day trip to 20 days, we thought we should just do that and cover the North and catch the Aurora borealis.
I had bought a book many years ago written by a Swedish evangelist “To Russia With Love” and I thought it was time for me to read it. It enthralled me with accounts of their hunger for the Lord after the Cold War, and the mighty harvest and miracles that followed.
Anyway, back to the Arctic.
I believe the Lord has a reason for me to visit Russia, though it is not high on my bucket list. At Murmansk, our very enthusiastic Russian guide got us to pose and point at the ocean, saying that there is where the Arctic is.
I thought I’d bring back the cold of the Arctic to Singapore as we experienced an unusually hot February – the 3rd hottest month in Singapore in 90 years!
As a matter of fact, I was thinking about visiting the Antarctica (since the Phoenix is there) as I met a photographer in January who has done several photo shoots there. Instead, here I am in Murmansk, looking and pointing at the Arctic.
The Arctic is on Fire!
Months after that trip, I was stunned to see news agencies reporting unprecedented wildfires in the Arctic – in Greenland, Russia, Alaska…
In an article titled “Greenland is melting in a heatwave. That's everyone's problem” by CNN, they wrote:
“Greenland is home to the world's second-largest ice sheet. And when it melts significantly -- as it is expected to do this year -- there are knock-on effects for sea levels and weather across the globe.”
Iceland Held A Funeral for Its First Glacier Lost to Climate Change and Left This Warning Sign
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/passantino/iceland-held-a-funeral-for-its-first-glacier-lost-to
Scientists feared that with this massive meltdown, sea levels will surely rise at an alarming rate, possibly irreversible.
My Old Tsunami Dream
Many years ago, I had a dream that a tsunami hit Singapore as I was driving on the ECP, a highway by the east coast of Singapore. With all my kids in the back of my car, I drove frantically at full speed to the nearest exit on the highway. As I swerved onto the elevated bend at the Bedok exit, waves of water were already rushing up behind us. Crying out to God, I managed to drive away before the waters reached us.
The Lord showed me more in the years that followed about the impact of rising sea levels in Singapore, many years before this threat was publicly highlighted by our Prime Minister in his National Day Rally speech this year.
Will Islands Disappear?
I fear for my country, a small island in the Indian Ocean, mostly low lying, with the highest point at Bukit Timah Hill standing at only 164 m above sea level. Not just us, but also the many small islands in the Pacific, and places like Venice, Maldives and so on.
Are we at danger of being wiped out by the next big flood? If not in my generation, in the future generation?
Our Exodus to Higher Ground
In 2014, we obeyed the Lord to sell our property in the East, where I was born and raised all of my life. Years earlier, in December 2011, He had insisted that I buy a newly built property at the foot of Bukit Timah Hill, inland and close to the centre of Singapore. We were unable to move then as my children were schooling in the East but we eventually made our exodus in 2015.
Besides having to deal with monkeys (not my favourite animal), insects and snakes, it took a lot of pain to adjust to this whole new area for me and my family, as most of my relatives are residing in the East, which is a very charming place to live. But I trust the Lord and know that this is where my children and their children will probably live in future and it will be safe for them.
Will the Lord Do Something?
But if the Phoenix is at the Antarctica, watching, waiting, is there still some hope yet for mankind? Is the Antarctica the last bastion of hope?
Maybe, maybe, if the Lord is able to awake all the people in the world and their leaders to acknowledge this real and present danger, they will put aside personal interests and do something about it concertedly.
Hopefully so. If we are not too late.
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