House painting

What does it feel like to be a refugee in your own home? Simply do a painting job while trying to live life as normally as possible.

We started a long over-due painting of our flat thanks to a genrous gift from a friend. The results are already wonderful. No conservative off-white for us this time. Colour it is and each room a new and striking one no less.

As a sample, look at the shade of our main living / dining room wall:


The cross-stitch is a gift from Dr. and Mrs. Colin Binks on the occasion of us dedicating Asha to the Lord Jesus in January 2001. The picture has followed us to each of our homes - and now Asha and Enoch are able to sing all the verses of the song at the drop of a hat!

It is sobering to see how much effort and money goes into the process of painting. The sweat and grime that goes into sanding off and rubbing down. The various layers of plaster, primer and final coats which are put on. The cleaning up afterward of paint splatterd floors and dust in all nooks and crevasses.

Would that we would see something like this in who we are at our core. Too often we keep waiting and procrastinating - while the once beautiful and functional starts to chip away and decay.

What Africa needs

Photo by Margaret Bourke-White - 1950 in a S. African mine

In a provocative piece - a British journalist proposes something that we have not heard for a long, long time.

Take a look at this link by clicking: here.

Slumdogs

It's Oscar season somewhere far away - and our papers are in a tizzy because for the first time an 'Indian film' is in the running for best pic etc. The flick is an adaptation of a book called Q&A - about a young kid from the slums of Mumbai who makes it big by bashing through life with all its seamy ugliness and violence and finally reaching out to his lady love through the TV game show Kaun Banega Crorepati (the desi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire).

The inevitable discussion is up and running again. Should we be proud of this? Are we once again displaying our poverty? What is the role of cinema - to instruct or entertain or both or neither?

I remember a dear friend of mine who with a pained expression told our fellow students at graduate school - "You see, India is not a poor country. I know. I grew up there. We did have people who were working for us who were less well off, but they were well taken care of and happy."

In the countless interviews that the film's director Danny Boyle is giving as part of the marketing of the flick, Boyle says that he was gripped by the vitality, the energy and the fun that characterises the people living in the slums. He is clear that he did not want to show passive, victim folks - but rather people of intelligence, living with purpose.

So far so good.

We all want to feel happy, and having a flick with a happy ending where the guy gets the girl, and lots of money, and the bad guys are eliminated is at the end of the day what we are wired to desire.

Why? Because deep in us we know that this shoddy mess of a life has to have more meaning, more resolution than it does right now. Because we know that history is moving towards a denoument - a consumation of all our dreams.

Its called the Kingdom - and it is what we all yearn for.

The challenge is how to be realistically hopeful.

Slumdog uses the term to refer to the cunning dogs who hang around, eyes half open in their snooze, carefully weighing out the threats and moving in when something to eat may appear.

That's a nice metaphor if you are a Brit film maker doing a recce on a film location - to take in some of the local flavour - find out that it isn't only despair - but then to repair back to your hotel room for the night (and 2 weeks later to jet back of to Blighty).

Its different if you see the slumdogs every day. Howling at night. Getting crushed by vehicles. Vigourously copulating during their heat. Raising litters of emaciated pups who inevitably see attrition from cars, disease and malnutrition.

Here's a picture of one. Cute right? It was crushed by a motor-vehicle 2 minutes after this pic was taken.

Is there any hope in the slums? Sure. That's why we are here.

But the hope isn't in the escapism of Bollywood / Hollywood / Tollywood etc. We see cycle after cycle of young girls who go into their mid-teens and exit their teens having followed the 'Filmi' dream and eloping with a young man from the neighbourhood. Almost inevitably his drunkeness and violence means they are either back home with their mother or locked into the next cycle of misery with their husband.

True hope lies in far quieter ways.

It lies in the untold sacrifices mothers make to get their kids into the local "English medium" school - and the inevitable after-school coaching classes. It lies in simple folks gathering for prayer in small rooms. The ragged songs that focus so much on how Jesus will heal and help, but offer real steps in a relationship with their maker. In people praying for each other in their homes. In the life of a man who is finally able to give up the bottle. Or the lady who is able to forgive her husband and his relatives.

Jesus talked about the kingdom being hidden. It still is to a large extent. We yearn for things to be better. We want the big cataclysmic changes to take place. But our Lord is seeing the many hidden things that are taking place, the many people who are 'coming as a child'.

Amidst the muck of the present - and that includes the often hollow lives of our moneyed classes - the almost daily deposit of empty whisky bottles next door to us is evidence enough of this - amidst the often crushing gloom - we have a 'Kingdom-shaped' vaccum in our hearts. We know that our crazy, topsy-turvey world is calling out for a setting right. And that the setting right is taking place - though as usual it is unlikely to be in a way, time-span or fashion that we desire.

Films offer us a brief linear chance to see messes get cleaned up. Lets not knock them for that - the basic flow is the right one - in its own refracted way the 'happy-ending' that we so enjoy in a flick mirrors/shadows the Christ-centered view of history that says we are moving from chaos to consummation.

We deeply desire the resolution of narrative tension - and so our stories weave in and out of the great master-story - which is the Master's story.

Daniel

I was talking to 2 friends at a marriage reception last night. Both of them are finding the pressures of work almost unbearable. Sheba and I are in a different position - our work is not the same as our friends - but I have been chronically tired now for at least a year - falling asleep while sitting down - sometimes even when praying (surprise!).

But what about Daniel. How was he able to govern a massive, complex empire with 127 provinces - and yet worship God at (a minimum of) 3 times each day. His enemies could find no corruption and no sloth in him. The King later says refers to "the God whom you serve with all your heart". The King had no cause for complaint with Daniel's work - in fact, seeing the quality of his work - he steadily promoted him - ending up with a situation where this man who had been brought as a prisoner to Babylon was not the second in command of the whole empire.

Would that this would be true of me. If I had enemies and if they came snooping into what I am doing and who I am - they will find many instances that are wrong and that I would be ashamed of showing.

Daniel is a light and an example - but just a shadow the amazing attributes that we so fully see in the person of Jesus.

Our challenge is to see His lordship in every part of our lives. We can become like Daniel. Its possible - because the same God who listened to Daniel and helped Daniel and others to act decisively is the God who is alive today - and very alive to our issues too.

May the Lord bless you in all you do!

The future is another country

One of the blessed things about our experience of time is the sheer connectedness of it.

I am linked with who I was in the past - with the sum of the experiences that I remember as well as in many ways with things that I may not fully recall.

At the same time, we have the ability to think forward. To plan. To anticipate and expect. And then the hoped for time or day actually arrives.

For me the two 'big' years that never seemed possible were 1997 - for some reason I could not imagine the British giving up Hong Kong - and 1999 - the thought of a millenial change-over was just boggling to me.

Those years are now dusty history.

As we look into this year - we are amazed at what it holds - and what is in store. But do we ever stop to be thankful for the sheer miracle of actually 'being there' on the days as they tick along off the calendar?

At Jeevan Sahara Kendra we have the opportunity of shifting our operations into the current Lok Hospital. This may take place at the end of 2009. Perhaps early 2010.

It certainly is a mind-boggling thought. But here we are - with the opportunity to put plans into action. To set up different tasks to do - and then as the days slip by - to be amazed to see many of those 'thought-experiments' which were in our minds actually materialize.

In the mean-time, we need to get cracking. To be actively listening to what God is saying about our plans to see Jeevan Sahara Kendra become what He wants us to be. To allow him to shape our lives as His hands and feet. To be good stewards of the tremendous trust and opportunities we have in the lives that we are already involved with - and be sensitive to what He wants us to do next too.

The future is another country. But it starts today.

Challenges to Faith

Challenges to faith.

Faith is taking God at his word.

The Bible is so full of promises that express God's outer power and inner nature. We have so many promises for us.

And we have plenty of challenges that allow us to put this into practice;

1. Tomorrow brother Ravindranath - from GMI Church - will be having a skin graft operation on his leg. He had his foot run over by a truck some months ago and has been in great pain as they surgeons have had to amputate part of his foot after infection set in - and now are trying to save the rest. This man has been used in such amazing ways to reach out to people in prison.

2. Tomorrow Mrs. Candy will be shifted from Sion Hospital to JSK for a night - and then will be taken the next day by MSF staff to the HIV care centre in Panchgani. We would have loved to look after her here - but do not have the nursing staff. She has undergone severe physchiatric side-effects from a 2nd line TB medication she has been taking through MSF.

3. Tomorrow a desititute widow will be taken to be reunited with her child and then taken to Mukti Mission in Kedgaon for long-term rehabilitation and care. Mrs. "Tina" is not HIV positive, but has been driven away from her home by her in-laws and her brother and so has been living on the street for the past 2 years. She was highly pregnant when our staff met her - and was able to give birth to a child in the Thane Civil Hospital thanks to JSK staff. Though she does not fit into our core calling, we became invovled and were just about to take her and the baby to Mukti when a well-meaning had her whisked off to the government Child Care committee - who then took the child from the mother and sent Mrs. Tina home - so that she has become mentally imbalanced, mourning the loss of her child. Despite the inputs of our staff, we will be sending a very broken mother and child to Mukti.

Each situation seems hopeless and desperate. Each one is an opportunity for God's love and care to be seen in a broken and cruel world. Each a chance for us to hold on to what we know - and grow in confidence and awe of He who is past change.

Faith is taking God at his word - and acting out what we know He wants (and we know a lot more than we may want to admit).

Memories

One of our resolutions for the new year is to have at least one experience each month with the kids that contributes to building great memories.

Looking back on my parents - it is something that they did amazingly well. We marvel now at how they were able to spend so much time with us - and in such wonderful ways on such a limited budget.

This month we managed to squeeze in a visit to the planetarium.

What a place it is. To be in that big room and see the stars and galaxies. To actually 'go' to the surface of the sun and see the massive plumes of fire spouting out into space. To see a bird's eye view of the Chandrayan 1 moon-rocket that India has made - and then be part of its lift-off. Amazing stuff.

Humbling too - and not just to think of the absolutely tiny area of the vast cosmos that our beautiful blue planet occupies - Asha seemed more excited about the street-market outside Dadar station than the mysteries of space.

The day was capped off with Asha attending her violin class at 4, Andi taking part in a marriage-planning meeting at 6, us hosting the young people from church at 7.30 and then the highlight of the day:
Asha and Enoch's best friends Nikita and Jasper came by - and we managed to persuade their parents (and our dear friends) John and Nalini to stay for the night!

Memories. Wonderful ones - made regularly to order in the Eicher household!