Amma left us suddenly and unexpectedly. But her life was lived large.
We miss her much. Recently
when we were down in Chennai at Peter and Yashmeet’s place, dear Amma came to
mind again and again. Meeting Appa always
brings Amma to mind. This home was the
place where Amma went sleep one night, and woke up the next morning with the
Lord. And in this home Amma still speaks
even though she has left us for paradise.
It is possible to speak even after you have died. After we decided to shift Dad to palliation
for his pancreatic cancer, he recorded a short message to be played at his
upcoming funeral – both in Hindi and in English. We showed the Hindi version at Dad’s funeral
on August 15th 3 years ago.
It was quite powerful to hear Dad share what he always did – a message
of hope and joy.
One of the ways Amma speaks to us today is through her
cross-stitch pictures.
Amma loved to do things with her hands. Besides her amazing
cooking, cross-stitching and knitting were ways that she expressed her love.
In Peter and Yashmeet’s home we found 4 of her cross-stitch
pictures on display. Each is enriched
with some key words from God’s revealed word as recorded in the Bible.
Join us as we take a small contemplative walk through the
house, stopping at the different pictures which Amma lovingly made and which speak
to us today. Do spend some time
meditating on what the Lord is revealing to us His dearly loved children.
Our first picture is a cross-stitch
is based on a picture that Wendy Binks gave to Asha at Asha’s dedication in
Jharkhand, many years ago.
Whatever you do
In word or deed
Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus (Col 3.17)
Our lives are short.
Eternity is forever. We lived on
a visited planet.
We have multiple choices about how we spend our time. How we spend our day to day activities.
Things that over time can become mundane and repetitive
.
As well as the ‘big events’ that shine out. A career choice. A personal faith decision. A betrothal for a life together.
What do we do? And
how do we do these things?
The verse Amma chose asks us to keep something very clearly
in focus. Eternity matters and He who
holds eternity in His hand matters most.
The ex-cricketer and fool-for-God CT Studd, speaking in a
different generation had this to say:
Only one life, T’will soon be past
Only what’s done for Jesus will last
May the fragrance of Jesus pervade everything we do. May all our actions vibrate with His divine
presence, power and love. May we be
intentional and as loving children tremble with joy in His presence, acknowledging
Him in all the steps – big and small – that we take on this pilgrim life of
ours…
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Our next picture from Amma’s loving hands looks out from
a wall in the living room.
The message is straight forward.
A command and a promise.
Call to Jesus.
Talk. Speak out. Don’t mumble and procrastinate. Our Lord yearns to hear from us His beloved
children.
As a father, I want so much for Enoch to give me a
call. We cannot call him at his boarding
school, but he can use one of the phones in the dorm and call us. The problem is that his life is so full. We know that those small slivers of time
before a meal, after a football practice are hard to translate into a call to
Mum and Dad.
And then there is the super frustration of Enoch calling us –
only for him to hear ‘this number is not available at the moment’ – ‘this
number is outside the calling range, please try later.’ And then even greater frustration to have him
‘get through’ to us – and for us not to be able to hear him due to poor
reception.
But when we do ‘get through’ – what a sweet delight to hear
his voice.
How much more our heavenly Father yearns to hear us. Delights to listen to His beloved children.
Call to me. Not to another. I would be so sad if Enoch spent his precious
conversations talking to someone else. Let’s speak directly to Jesus. Let’s not waste any time in haphazard
shots-in-the-dark when He has appeared to us and directly tells us “ask,
seek, find…” “Come to me, all you who
are weak and heavy-laden, I will give you rest.”
And then there is the wonderful promise.
I will answer.
I and not another.
Not some chat-bot powered by AI.
Not some underling out-sourced for the task. But YHWH Himself. The great I AM. The everlasting Father.
How can the God of Gods speak to us? How can we hear His voice? How can the effable partake of the ineffable?
And that too, the Lord says that He hears the weak and
broken hearted. We don’t need to perform
to gain an audience with Him. He does
not count our merits when He decides to answer our call.
Do we actually believe this?
Are our lives revelation-driven?
Or are we more-or-less practical atheists (or perhaps ‘clock-work-universalists’)
running our lives on our own, acting as if there is no one who is above us – or
as if God has set everything up and gone away on a looooong vacation?
I will answer. That’s
what He says. It’s for us to live this
truth out in the hustle and bustle of our days.
Thank you Amma for reminding us of this truth.
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The third picture is currently hanging in Appa’s
room. It is one of a series of pictures
Amma made for each of her grand-children.
We have one with a different verse for Asha and Enoch which has hung in
our home reminding us of Amma’s love.
The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over
all his works. Ps. 145.9
How much we need to be reminded of this truth every day.
We seem awash in a sea of corruption and shamelessness. Politicians who claim to be cleaning out the Aegean stables do so by blatantly purchasing others. The
cruelty of humanity makes its way into our newspapers with almost metronomical
regularity. I don’t even want to write
the words here…
Can it be true in this broken world, that the Lord is really
good to all, and that His tender mercies are over all His works?
Our sin-stained eyes, our bruised souls, our inflamed
relationships can give us what literally is a jaundiced look at the world. There is real evil, but it is not from the
Lord – who is only good. We must keep
reminding ourselves of this truth. And
the very horror we feel at the rot around us points to something beyond the
decay that can assail us on all sides.
The word that the Word uses is “mercy.” That’s an interesting choice.
Mercy is given when punishment is deserved, but when an
exception, a pardon is given in its place.
It’s a hard word to use when real abuse has taken place, when the perpetrator
is still on the loose.
But God’s mercy is a different dimension. Not only does He give mercy, he also takes
the punishment. His mercy is not callous
and random – it has been paid for in full – by the mercy-Giver Himself.
And so we need to be reminded that His tender mercies are
indeed over all His works.
Starting with me. Starting
today.
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And so we come finally to the last message of Amma for
us.
This cross-stitch is framed and hangs in Appa’s room,
above his bed. I have in my mind’s eye
the image of Appa taking his afternoon nap on a hot Chennai day, with this picture
serenely in the back-ground.
And even to your old age, I am He, and even to grey hairs
will I carry you,
I have made, and I will bear, even I will carry, and will
deliver you. (Isaiah 46.3)
None of us are growing younger.
Appa has completed 81 years on this planet. Oma turns 82 in November. Sheba and I have racked up a century of years
between us this year.
God, our Maker, and our Sustainer, has words of comfort for us
as the years progress.
First of all we have a hope of growing old. At Indian independence, the average
life-expectancy at birth was only 47 years.
Most people died well before they became 50 (many of course in infancy
and childhood). But today that has grown
to about 68 years. Today our population
is greying and many are spending years alone and neglected.
As we look at the next two decades, we realise that we will
be reaching the age that Amma died at.
Sobering stuff.
But this is what the Lord says to us. He has made us. He will carry us. Sheba and I have a number of grey hairs. And on my head the hereditary baldness of my
mother’s Fischer forebears is readily seen.
But the promise is the He will carry us. We think of the shepherd
carrying the new born lamb. But we also
have the image of the shepherd carrying the old and weak sheep.
He who made us, who fashioned us so miraculously (take alook at this talk). He will sustain
us. He will hold us together physically when
things seem to be falling apart. Hold us
to each other as we grow old in tandem.
Hold us to Himself when we feel lonely and afraid. Hold our hands, especially on that day if and
when our mind begins to play tricks. A
possible and plausible day when we are not fully in control of our selves. When our understanding becomes muddled and
confused as we have seen in so many of our dear ones.
He will hold us. He
will carry us. He will deliver us.
What a set of promises.
What a Lord. The Ancient of days
whose mercies are new every morning.
Great is His faithfulness.
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And so we have come to the end of our small tour of Amma’s
words – which have of course been the words of her lovely Lord.
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