Gratitude

William died this morning.  4 AM.  At the Jeevan Sahara Kendra Care Centre.

He was last hours were peaceful.  He died in his sleep.  He had been lovingly cared for for the past month by our nurses and many others.

But the last two weeks were not easy.  Death comes differently to each person.  William's last days were hard.  For him.  For all who were caring for him. 

William's whole life has been hard.  He died at 22.  HIV infected from birth.  An orphan.  Cared for by a series of giving people.  Stabilised and launched out on his own.  Living independently and working.  But harbouring the virus.

When we first met him he was like any other young gun around.  Tall, lanky, ear-buds linked to his mobile, carrying a messenger bag.  He had not been well.  We diagnosed him as having TB.  He did not start treatment immediately.

The next time we met him he was deathly sick.

The TB had taken over.  His bowels were bloated.  His breathing was hard.  After some time at our centre we shifted him to Bethany for respiratory help.  He was then found to have a perforation of his intestine.  Emergency surgery was done.  He was still very sick, but wanted very much to get better, and to get out of the hospital.

After 2 weeks we shifted him back to JSK.  William was a demanding young man.  He was convinced that he was getting better.  Then he lapsed into depression.  Then demanding again.  The food wasn't right.  The bed was too hard.  The pain was too much.  He couldn't sleep.  He wanted sedation.  He did not want sedation.  Our nurses - including two American angels who God probably sent for this express purpose - took it all in and cared on.  Not carried on - they cared on.

No one likes to die.  No one.  William talked with one of our volunteers 2 nights ago.  He was afraid.  The volunteer reminded him of Jesus' love for him.  William prayed.  We had not seen him pray on his own before.  It made a huge difference.  The last 48 hours were no easy road - but they were better than many of the previous had been.

We believe that William is in the very presence of God as these words are being typed.  His body lies only 3 meters away from me as I type this.  The other side of the wall from my office.  This afternoon it will be interred into the ground - to await the resurrection - that mysterious and true hope that a follower of Jesus Christ has.  But we know that Jesus - dying on the cross told his fellow executee 'truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise'.  William has joined His sweet Lord.  Amen and amen.

And so we have a roll of gratitude.  The world is going on as usual.  People are rushing to their offices.  A cricket match is being played in Kolkotta.  New films are being released today in the cinemas.  No newspaper will report William's passing, no TV channel will send their bright young things to poke mics and ask for sound-bites.

But we know who loved William.  Our doctors and nurses.  The long hours of care that were given.  The selfless service that took place in these walls.  And outside.  Yesterday evening William was wheeled in a wheel chair downstairs.  It was the last time I saw him on this side of eternity.  Thank you Sheba, Marise, Agnes, Amy, Alissa, Dipali and Sunita.  Thank you other JSK team members for what you did for William in various ways.  Your love and care and errands and prayers. 

Thank you Pastor Vinney, brother Nathan and others from the Church who cared and loved William.  Thank you brothers of William who came and cared all those nights.  Thank you for all that you did and invested in this young man's life. 

Now is a time for tears.  But it is also a time for gratitude.  The time for loving is past.  For those who loved while William was alive - our gratitude goes up to God for you.

Farewell sweet prince.

Oneness

This Friday I have the privilege of talking to some young men who are about to get married.  We will be looking at a Biblical foundation for life together - for being one.  Two people, two lives twined into a single thread.  As Christians we believe that we need to have God with us, blessing our union to make it strong and resilient.  The wise man wrote "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Eccl. 4.12).

If the session were held a-week-and-a-day-later, these young guns would be celebrating with Sheba and me as we complete 13 years of marriage together on the 15th of December.

This year, more than any so far, has brought to me the brutal fact of some of my closest friends finding the bottom of their worlds dropping out as their marriages unravel.  I think back on one such marriage a-decade-and-a-half-ago, remembering the glorious day of promises, the utter joy of the couple.  Today I am reeling as I get small snippets of text that express the deep crushing sadness of a couple who are telling their children that they are divorcing.  I carry the news in my heart, praying intermittently, going back again and again to what my friends are doing, the choices that are being made, the tragic story that is unfolding in the midst of material plenty.  Lord have mercy.

Its never been easy to stay together.  Everything around us tells us that we have to look after ourselves.  The deepest hurts that bubble up in our marriage revolve around feelings of not being appreciated by the other, when we feel our needs are not being met, when we have been taken for granted.  As one of our church elders put it so well "We are hurt by our most intimate family members because we expect so much from them, and at the same time we appreciate them so little... because we expect so much from them."

Shortly after the debacle in the Garden - God asks Adam what happened... and the first recorded man points his finger at his wife and blames God saying 'the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it."  Classic, original blame-shifting.  I always am right.  Everyone else is always wrong.  Especially her (or him if you are on the other side).

13 years is a long time.  My marriage with Sheba is now sneaked up past a quarter of our lives - and is almost 1/3.  Soberingly, we will hit 60 before it reaches the halfway point.   But over these years we have had many times when things were not happy-happy.   When what I did has really hurt her.  When what she said did vice versa to me.

But am I ever so grateful to Sheba for the stream of love and care that continues to flow.  I have been so unworthy of it time and time again - but despite that she has continued to love and care for me.  And there have been times over these years when I have had opportunities to give grace to Sheba.  We had (and still have) our fair share of rough edges.  Ones that bring a fair amount of friction, but are also amenable to change.  Its hard to come face to face with your own unpleasantness, the utter fact of needing to change.  We tend to lash out, to defend, to build walls instead of seeing our partner as a God-given instrument to shape us.

The absolute core of it all comes out clearly in a beautiful two sentences by St. Paul.  Writing to a church in a city called Colossae, he urges them with these words:  Therefore as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, humility, kindness, gentleness and patience (Col. 3.12).  The idea of 'clothing' ourselves talks about how much we need to 'put them on.'  Looking back on 13 years, how many times I wasn't wearing these beautiful clothes - and how much Sheba suffered because of that.  Multiply that out into so many lives and you have the recipe for so much heart-ache.  Our marriages are finally not about doing neat things together, or working to get the kids grown-up, or pleasing whatever relatives we may have.  We will be moving towards one-ness when we put on these things.  We will be moving apart when we leave them in the wardrobe... or don't even try them on at all.

And then Paul brings in the kicker.  Now he is talking to a church - to a pretty rowdy set of folks who clearly had some problems with getting along with each other.  But what he says totally true for our marriages.  Here's the crux of it all:  Bear with each other, and forgive whatever grievances you may have against each other. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  (Col. 3.13).

There it is. The recipe for oneness.  And how hard it is.  It means that I need to die to self - for her.  And vice versa.

Bear with each other.  There are lots and lots of things that I may not like in my spouse.  But if I am honest to myself, those things are not wrong - they are just not my style, my taste, my preferences.  Well, I need to bear with them.  I don't need to change them.  My love and commitment to our union depends on my acceptance of her - even the parts that are not 'just how I want.'

And then there are things that are really bad.  Things that she has done to me that are wrong.  Lets not even talk of my list.  What are we to do with these actions.  Here is comes. Forgive whatever grievances you may have against each other.  This is not just perceived slights and hurts.  No way.  This is the real rotten things that we have done to each other.  What are we to do? To forgive.  And just in case we don't understand we are reminded - Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  

Ouch.  I must forgive, not because I want to.  Not because she deserves it. But in the amazing grace sense that Christ forgives me.  Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing Jesus prays as the nails are driven through his wrists and feet.  In marriage - which we have pledged to before God and humanity - we don't have the right to keep our hurts, to nurse our grudges, to let our egos do the talking.  The Biblical model is constant, continual forgiveness.  Crazy love.  Very hard to do.  But not impossible.  Especially if its not just me alone - or even if it is not just the two of us trying our hardest - we need the touch of the Divine to just make it through the day.  Every day.

I have seen this in my parents growing up.  Real areas of hurt and misunderstanding.  And real forgiveness between Mum and Dad.  Their 45 years of togetherness that they will celebrate this 23rd of December is a testimony to this.  Two normal, fallible people - continually loving each other through on-going forgiveness.  As I have grown older I have seen the rough patches clearer.  You would think that just being together for a long time will make everything smooth.  Hardly. In fact I get angry when I see things that I thought were dealt with long ago.  But who am I to say as I look back into my own unfinished life?  Into the many parts of my union with Sheba where I have yet to bend?  What do I see - and have seen over all these years - in Mum and Dad are two people who are doing the work of love.  Bearing with each other.  Forgiving each other.  Remembering how Jesus loves and forgives them.  Repeat.

And that's what we hope Asha and Enoch are seeing in us.  We have hardly been model parents.  But we want them to capture this basic pattern of oneness.  Dying to self.  Building each other up.  Taking delight in each other.  Giving grace to each other.

We are excited by folks who are stepping into marriage.  We are grieved by our loved ones who are making steps to annul what they promised.  Have mercy, Oh Lord, have mercy on us all.  We are far from where we want to be, but on a journey, and so grateful for people who have showered us with grace, patience and prayer.

Kyrie eleison


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p.s.  As with everything, we pick up lots of things along the way.  The Col. 3.12-13 bit comes primarily from John Piper's book This Momentary Marriage.  You can download it by clicking: here

Light the world

Carry your candle... go light the world go the strains of a stirring song.

We did that over this weekend.  World AIDS Day - Dec. 1st was marked on Saturday - and Mumbai AIDS Sunday - was commemorated on the next day.

It was action stations all the way.  The JSK team did an amazing job - running a huge awareness and testing camp at a nearby Primary Health Centre.  Thanks to their tireless advocacy - and to the govt. doctor and nurses seeking to have all their TB patients tested - the team managed to counsel and test 159 people!  This was a tribute to the hard work done by the outreach team who toured around the vast slum in which the PHC is located, doing street plays about HIV and handing out pamphlets about the camp and booklets aimed at young people.

Sangeeta, one of our staff, told us this morning that she felt shy doing the skit at the place where she normally does her vegetable shopping.  Later in the evening she heard two children talking about her - "look, there is one of the people from the circus" they said pointing at her.  She went over and explained about the skit that they had been performing.

That we were hitting the right people was evident both from the numbers - all the tests were entirely voluntary and confidential - and also what they told the counsellors.  Many of the young people (mainly men) are sexually active and make no bones about it.  Amazingly - not a single person tested HIV positive.  It shows how blessed we are to have a relatively low population prevalence of HIV in our country.  And how much we want this to stay this way.

In the evening we went as a family to the United Basel Mission Church in Chembur for a choir night.  Christmas season is kicking off and we were treated to some awe-inspiring music from various choirs across Mumbai and beyond.  I had been asked to speak and found it strangely apt to about Jesus who was born at the very margins of society, was a refugee, was considered a bastard by his peers and the religious authorities - and who calls His children to love as He loved us.  To leave the beauties of the church and be church out in the slums and in the brokenness of people's lives.

But we need beauty too.  As a family we managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the Nehru Planetarium in Worli and were gob-smacked to see glimpses of the wonders of the Cosmos.

We saw images like this - and were humbled to be reminded of just how small a planet we live in the midst of the innumerable dizzying strands of galaxies...

And in all of this the narrator kept coming back to the miracle that the earth is - bejeweled blue wonder - alive and atmosphere-sheathed due to the immense amount of life we enjoy here.  And able in our finiteness to look out and wonder at all that stretches out far beyond what we can really fathom...  The only wonder they left out was that so much beauty and structure can be marvelled at without giving credit to the master Artist who lovingly spoke them into being out of nothingness... ah well, its been that way from the very beginning of humanity...

And it was this one who breathed the universe into being who chose to become a totally helpless child, being cleaned and nursed by his mother and foster dad, and to live a life that can only be called a miracle for each one of us.  Entirely apt to be remembering Christ on a day when we remember people with HIV - and vice versa - bringing the needs of people with HIV to Christ and his church.

I spoke the next morning at a Marthoma Church in Thane (1.5 hours of Malayalam liturgy - with 20 mins of sermon by me about Jesus and the man with leprosy in the middle of the eucharist celebration) - and then was part of our own house-church commemoration of Mumbai AIDS Sunday.   We had one of our church members who is living with HIV share her testimony - and a dear brother from the Indian Air Force talked about perfect love casting out fear.  We then had intercessory prayer together, shared our experiences and enjoyed a pot-luck love feast.  In the afternoon a smaller group (alas) stayed on for more prayer and then we split up to visit homes.  All 5 homes that the small teams went to were people living or having had parents affected by HIV.

In one particular home, a young girl was dying.  Her mother who had largely given up caring for her over the past months was at home.  Our 3 church folk who had come to the home spent time with the girl.  Talking to her.  Praying with her.  Holding her hand.  She was too weak to speak. Her mother went into the tiny kitchen with one of the ladies and cried.   What do you say?  When the team got back home a phone call came.  The girl had left this world.  Another person with HIV slipping into eternity.

No easy answers.  But how blessed that our people were with this mother and child in those last minutes of her life.  How much the heart of Jesus is broken by the hidden suffering in our midst.  And how much His heart must be broken by the callous vulgar pursuit of self that is the dominant religion of this age (and has been since a certain twosome broke trust with God in their beautiful garden home so many years ago).

Carry your candle... go light the world

A long walk

In the run up to World AIDS Day 2012, the UNAIDS has put out a global report on the HIV epidemic.  Called 'Results', the report is upbeat as it tells of massive reductions in new HIV infections over the last decade (700,000 less in 2011 than in 2001), huge increases in the numbers of people taking ART (8 million world wide now - over half of those eligible to take it) and big reductions in the death rates (500,000 fewer people died of HIV in 2011 than in 2006).

We celebrate this and are thrilled to see some big-picture changes!  We have seen some of these shifts first-hand in our own work.

When we started out in 2002, Jeevan Sahara Kendra was basically caring for the dying, Today our team provides a continuum of care which starts with encouraging people for testing, talking through what the results mean, helping those with HIV assess the progress of the disease, working out a treatment plan and starting on the appropriate ways of treating including in-patient admission if needed... all the way to end of life care when we see the meds just not kicking in any more and what the person and their family primarily needs is comfort care.   All along we are committed to whole-person care through listening, caring, praying, helping care-givers and linking up with people from local churches.

At the level of our friends who are living with HIV, things are still very far from being rosy.  We do see people living so much longer - but the challenges remain.  Daily.

Last Friday we reviewed the weeks work at JSK  - and these are notes about four of the priority patients that one of our home-based care team has.

a.  Mrs. Tamarian (all names changed of course) continues to suffer from long-term bleeding.  The govt. hospital has refused a hysterectomy a number of times.  Her son needs to have his viral load done, but Mrs. Tamarian is avoiding the team.  She is depressed and wants financial help, but does not take positive steps to meet regularly with the people from the local church.  Our team is frustrated by the passivity in Mrs. Tamarian - esp. with the various options that she has.

b. Mrs. Langru is living in an abusive relationship.  The man she has her child with has left his wife and is living with her, but is beating her regularly.  The team is at wits end about how to help Mrs. Langru and her small infant child.  Mrs. Langru's behaviour in the past has been erratic.  Her current choices continue this path.

c. Mrs. Nandu and her two daughters are just not taking their ART well.  Each week at least one of them will forget to take their doses.  The team has made charts, followed up repeatedly, talked and prayed with this young widow and her adolescent daughters, but real change just does not seem to take place.

d. Mrs. Bani has been taking her TB medicines from a private doctor.  She is irregular on them and needs to be shifted to free meds from the government.  The team is also trying to get her into the free treatment stream for her ART meds as she is spending a lot at this time.  Mrs. Bani seems disinterested in her treatment at present.

Four lives. Each very complicated.  Each enmeshed in various levels of relationships (or lack of relationships) with their extended family and people around them.  Our team tries to visit them regularly - to meet and understand - to encourage and to pray - to help make positive steps forward.

Its a long walk

On reading Tom Sawyer

One of the great joys of parenting is the opportunity to revisit books that you vaguely remember.  Or think you remember.  But now you get the chance to read them again.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer fall into this category.   One of Asha and Enoch's 'aunties' gave them a generous gift to buy books with - and books we did buy.  Tom Sawyer was one of the bounty and we have just finished reading through it.

I actually found myself strangely ambivalent about Tom.  Two or three chapters into the book I wondered if I even wanted to continue reading.  Tom seemed so over-the-top, so venial.

But by then Samuel Clemens had me hooked.  The rawness of the language, the wicked sarcasm of anything upright, and the sheer plunge of the story got the better of me.

This is the 'Midnight's Children' of American literature.  Instead of trying to gentrify the experience of living in still newly colonized Missourie, Mark Twain gives us a raw, guts hanging out picture of a small stuffy village at the edge of the frontier.  His Tom is an outlaw and misfit - but one who craves the fame and glory and notoriety of being the village's favourite son - on his own terms.  But Twain's genius is to give us the broken schoolboy / ruffian slang that runs like a song throughout the book.  The man obviously had an ear for what was spoken.  Like Rushdie, Twain is unapologetic about his chutnified English (American as many would call it) - allowing the cut and thrust of words of Tom and Huck Finn's conversations to pull you along deliciously.

And then there is the sheer glory of the story.  From comic set-pieces, to an out-and-out adventure (all the while poking gentle fun at the story-book romances that Tom has), to biting satire of a small-minded place, Twain has it all.  The man does tell his tales well.  The book may not be polished - but we polished it off with gusto.

Despite disclaimers that he was up to nothing serious with the story (also similar to Rushdie), it is clear that Twain has a number of axes to grind.  The first and foremost being with anything to do with religious faith.  The second is with authority in general.  Reading this in an age where sincere faith is often ridiculed a priori, it seems like Twain lived in a different era.  And so he did.  He was railing against a time when holding to a faith was considered normal if not normative, though various forms were busily competing with each other.  Similarly, his take on authority has him lampooning all forms of with the same brush.  He offers a romantic rebel as an alternative - but stops short of going all the way.  His Tom is too domesticated to live the life of Huck Finn.  Its always easier to poke fun at ordered nature of things, and then come home to a good solid meal, and the security of home.

So at the end of reading the book with Enoch (Asha had already read it on her own and sat in for some of the chapters - especially towards the end), what did I take away?

One a sheer marvel at the freshness of Twain's language.  Here is a master listener at work.  One who hears the rhythms of speech and brings the conversations alive with zest.

Secondly, I take away the picture of a society that was far from perfect, but did have various levels of social bonding.  Twain not only paints a picture of Tom and the other principal characters - but we get a picture of the whole village - complete with their religion in the church, their swarming behaviour in times of trouble, the vignettes of what life in mid 1800s America was like.  Books are such efficient time-travelling-machines.  What bliss to be transported back in time.

My third take-home is a that strangely, I also felt a shade of sadness.  Under the frivolity and gaiety Twain makes out, there is a core of humanity and dare I say it, a spiritual longing that I don't see fulfilled in the book.  Tom's bravado leaves you hungry for something deeper.

Mum

Dear Mum,

Its already been two weeks since your birthday on the 11.11.12.   You turned 75 a fortnight ago - having seen - by God's grace - 75 spins around our nearest star.

Many have risen and called you blessed.  I would like to add my voice to the chorus.

Let me start by a conversation we had this week with a young couple from church.  They are facing the joys and challenges of raising 2 small kids.  They wanted to know what our experience was like with Asha and Enoch.  I found myself going back again and again to the structures and love and prayers that you and Dad had for the 3 of us growing up.  Who we are is because of the love that you poured into us.  Its only now as parents that we even begin to get a glimpse of all that you were for us as kids.

I think back to the journey that you have taken across this 3/4 century.  The early years in the collapse of the 3rd Reich - with you being separated from your parents for 2 years as a 6 year old - as the allied bombs rained down on German cities - including of course Leipzig.

I marvel at how you stayed sane in the post-war-rubble years where the grey German sky was mirrored in the lie-puppet-republic that was the 'German Democratic (sic) Republic.'  You kept your head - and headed out as soon as you could to freedom.

I am amazed at how you found yourself as a young German woman in Britain so soon after the war.  Learning English.  Cleaning houses.  And then over to France for more of the same.  Then Spain.

I thank God for the amazing experience you had - the awakening of the joy of Jesus - that swept over you as you came across the statement in Mark's Gospel - 'what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?'  You took Jesus at His word then - and have continued to do so 51 years later!  How blessed we are that you gave yourself fully to your loving Lord.  Trully - (s)he who loses his life for my sake will gain it.  You are living proof of that!

As you joined the bunch of earnest, merry, all-or-nothing folks that STL/OM were in those days - your paths took you through northern Italy, over to Turkey and then by mini-van over to India in 1964.

Thank you for coming here and being the most amazing wife to dear Dad.  You two are so very very different - and yet your love for each other and the hard lessons you have learned form the bedrock for our identity.

What can I say about all the people that we have seen you pour yourself into?  Wherever we go we bump into folks who remember your love.  Whose lives have been shaped by who you were to them.

We are now at an age that you were at the height of your activities at Nana Chowk.  Its hard not to compare - and we try not to - but when we do slip into looking at what you were doing at our ages... all we can say is 'thank you Lord!'

Your life has hardly been easy.  Many areas of blood, sweat and tears (as Dad promised you when you proposed to each other).  Many places where you have seen the dark night of the soul.  And yet through it all you have retained an inherent wonder at things.  Your child-like joy is infectious -  how we enjoy your joy at the blue flash of a bird flitting by, the latest orange cactus bloom in your garden, the raucous toot of a 7th grader who has just joined jazz-band...  You are fan No. 1 for so many - out of a genuine wonder and delight in all things bright and beautiful.

Over these past (almost 13) years of Sheba and my life together you have been such an amazing blessing to us.  We remember you and Dad being with us at Asha's birth - with Sis. Kachhap calling out 'Dadi, dadi' to tell you that you were now a grand-mother.  And over the years your prayers and visits and weekly phone-calls have helped us pull through.  Our one wish is that we were not 1.703.6 kms apart!

On our annual pilgrimages to Shanti Kunj over the last few years - we have seen you go into a whirlwind of hospitality - guarding us like a mother bear from unwanted outsiders - at pains that we get as much sleep and leisure as possible.  Its come at the cost of us listening to you.  Hearing what is in your heart.  Will we ever really be able to say all that needs to be said?  Time seems so strangely bendable.  Words seem to slip away just when you need them most.  Perhaps distance is the best place for appreciation as we still live in a time where we only see through the mirror darkly?

But let us state this and underline it.  We are so grateful for you.  For who you are.  For whom you have become.  For the largish bits and pieces of us that have been shaped and formed by your hands and heart over the years.  Words will never do justice - perhaps only our following in the paths that you have trodden before us - and us moving forward in the directions you shot us out into - and seeing that our next gen goes even further - perhaps that may be one way of expressing our thanks to God for you.

Pandita Ramabai said that 'A life totally committed to God has nothing to fear, nothing to lose, nothing to regret.'  Mum - we see so much of that in your life.  And that too we have seen it up very very close.  How much we want our lives to echo this too.

There is so much more to say.  But beyond the words there is so much more to live.

We love you very much,


Andi and Sheba, Asha and Enoch

Camp

Did you hear the mountains tremble?

We spent 3 days in Khandala over Diwali at our church Family Bible Camp.

What an experience it was.

Juanita with some of the girls - including Annette in her dragon costume

People came from near and far.  Ages ranged from 8 months to over 80 years.  Over 250 souls streamed in - about half of us from the 6 house-fellowships we are part of - and the others from a wonderful variety of different groups - including a group from Gujarat and folks from Hyderabad too. The traveller who came the furthest was our dear Arbind Singh who made the 3 day journey from his airforce posting at Shillong.

The theme for the camp was 'after God's own heart.'  This rich vein of truth was mined throughout our time together as we explored what being shaped into God's own character is like - and what it means in our daily lives.  David was a man after God's own heart.  Though far from perfect, he yearned for God, seeking to be transformed, and living a life that challenges us to follow God in every way.

The true man after God's own heart was the Lord Jesus Himself - He who emptied Himself of all but love and lived among us so that we could see God.

What a joy to have Philip B teach from the Bible in the mornings.  His slow, thoughtful, irenic exploration of the glorious truths in scripture was a delight to hear.  I found myself drinking deep.  After a tea-break Phil took the same passage in Hindi.  While one of the groups was getting their fill of Phil - the other group was split into small groups for discussions.  I facilitated a group of 'purity and purpose' and was amazed to see how much of what we discussed resonating through the camp.

When we talk about being after God's own heart  we just cannot get around His utter holiness. Stanley Nelson - who shared in one of the evening meetings - brought this out in a fascinating way.  He suggested that when the apostle John sees God surrounded by the elders and angels he also hears them proclaiming God's praises.  What must it be like to gaze in awe on the beauty of God Himself?  Surely only eternity will tell.  But what John hears the heavenly host proclaim over and over again is the word 'Holy, Holy, Holy'.  This aspect of God's character fills the host with awe and they give sacrifices of praise to the Lord of Hosts!

Its no wonder that God says 'be holy for I am holy.'  No wonder because of His character.  But a great wonder to consider that we can be included in this.  Phil took us through the sad early history of our race and showed how Adam and Eve choose to doubt God's goodness and disobey His revealed commands.  Phil feels that covetousness - the last on the list of the 10 commandments given to Moses - may be the root of most sin.  An unholy dissatisfaction with what we have, a jealous grasping desire for something outside of God's provisions, leading us to replace God in our lives and follow our own 'wisdom.'

Can you find Andi and Sheba?..... (hint - look for a very pink face!)

In the other two days Phil explored the dysfunctional church in Corinth, showing God's concern for them through the apostle Paul.  We could easily see our own fellowships in this harsh but loving light.  Paul urgently desires that the church live up to what it could be - but knows that it cannot change in its own strength - but only through the grace of God revealed through the cross.

Amazingly Paul is able to challenge the Corinthian followers of Christ imitate him - Paul himself.  Could you and I honestly urge that of others?  Are our lives lived out as open books where people can see that we are ordinary people who are following the extra-ordinary, amazing God of Gods?  Paul follows it up with a statement that 'the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power' (1 Cor. 4.20).  What does that say about us?  We are not talking power in the conventional sense of the word.  Power to shut down a city (we saw that recently - and that was based on fear).  Power to make my will subjugate someone else (history is full of that).  But power where we see lives changed.  Radically rebooted to where the reality of a risen Christ is unmistakable.  The Corinthian church had started well, but lost the plot and were bitterly squabbling, while quite proud of how 'spiritual' they were.  Does that sound familiar?

It does - all to sadly we see so much of the Corinthian church in us.  But the good news is that Paul wrote the book to help that particular church - and other Christ followers like our group of house-churches today - to change.

We saw some of this change in the lives of the people who attended the camp.  We were a motley crew - a total mixture with some having followed Christ for years - and others having just made the choice.  We had people who were very senior management execs and auto-rickshaw drivers who by attending the camp were missing 3 days of income.  All slept in the same simple dormitory accommodations in the cavernous halls of the school.  The picture is still far from perfect, but the we are seeing a mosaic made up of lives being transformed to be after God's own heart.  This was especially evident in those who poignantly shared about how their lives are changing as they experience the love and power of Jesus in them.

our good friend Veronica with Sheba

What else went on in the camp?  Lots of conversations over tea and food.  The kids had a separate programme and this year the young people came a day early for a mini-camp of their own (thanks Aaboo Varghese).   Asha helped out with the worship team - playing her violin.  The kids had a whale of a time with so many others their own age.  It was a joy to see them tearing around with others and by the end of the day when it was time for family prayers they were well and trully bushed.  We tried to fly a German 'tube kite' early one morning but only managed to get it tangled in a tree (we rescued it).  Lots of conversations and prayers with different folks.  Amazingly, the youth from various Marathi speaking Brethren churches were also holding a camp in the same site and they had asked me to speak to them, so one evening I popped up to the hall they were using and spoke on Biblical Sexuality which was well received.  And there was also some down-time too - not much but at least a bit to catch a nap in the afternoons.

Time had it seemed had both stopped and also was running at full speed.  Before we knew it, we were packing up and getting ready to disperse in the 4 buses that we had hired to take the campers back home.

Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow in one river
To wash away our brokenness

And we can see that God you're moving
A time of Jubilee is coming
When young and old will turn to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord