Tuesday evening meeting

Every Tuesday night we go up to a small room. Three flights of stairs. Sometimes without a light in the stairwell. Its a 2 room appartment with only one window.

Asha and Enoch arrive at home at 6.45 PM. We quickly swap their uniforms for normal clothes and bustle them down, catch an autorickshaw and end up in Manorama Nagar - one of the large shantytown areas of Thane.

The room that we meet inin better shape than the shacks around it - but not by too much. It is brick and concrete. It is on the 3rd floor of a 5 floor "illegal" appt. building (as are all in this area). The room got a coat of fresh paint this week - so it is not as dingy as it used to be. But no real window. No ventilation. Par for the course for so many of our urban dwellers.

And yet this is where we gather to learn about the son of a carpenter - the man who was also the Son of God. We are reading the Gospel according to Luke. The amazing person of Jesus shines through. We read and pray and see how His life shapes ours. How our brokeness and rejection of Him is countered in His love and embrace - as well as His desire that we repent and change.

The small group that gathers are exactly the people Jesus would have been hanging out with. Frail and foolish. Wrapped up in cares. Clinging on to life. Probably half are HIV positive too. But that is not the rallying point on this night. We are here to hear about this man Jesus. We are here to measure our own brokeness by his completeness - and see our hearts moulded into His.

We talked about temptation. The constant choices we have to make. The real, very real benefits that are directly angled our way. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert. Yet he had 40 solid days of anguish as our enemy sought to defeat him through every possible means. And at the root of it is this slippery thing called temptation - the bait to switch our loyalties from what we know is right - to what we is suggested we should have. Ditching our trust that God will look after us - and grabbing things in our own hands.

After the time together we talked with our brothers and sisters. One of the men lives nearby and had been bringing his autorickshaw home and was met by Shanti and told to join in. He talked about how he just does not have peace - that all day he is just struggling to get by - and that every free moment is spent worrying about what to do. And the rest of the time he is just waiting to explode in anger. We prayed together.

Afterwards I talked to another man. He asked for prayer. For India to win in cricket against Pakistan in the semi-finals of the World Cup. We laughed. I think he was serious. We talked that there were Jesus-followers in Pakistan who were probably praying this same for their team. If we do pray for cricket, it will be that the match will be a beautiful one.

We decided to walk home - about a 20 min walk through the slum - the road taking us up a hill and over the main highway to the next rise where our appartment is. We buy some tomatoes on the way. As we move down towards the highway a familar face emerges. "What are you doing here?" asks our scooter mechanic and insists that we stop in and see him room. We do. The four of us in the 8 x 10 foot room that his family of four live in. Parallel lives to us. Two kids. Girl and boy. In 4th and 2nd standards. We are given cashews and manage to escape tea only because it was so late at night. We leave a portion of Scripture with the man as we say our good-byes.

As we pass a neighbours home I see a lady who is a security guard at the local supermarket.

The world is alive with God's precious people. Its a privilege to live this life.