Walking dead

The lady came today to meet Sheba at the clinic.

She was 21. She has been a widow for almost a year now. She came with her mother in law.

This lady is HIV positive. Her husband died of AIDS.

This lady married a decade ago.

You do the math at how young this lady was when she got married.

We sent a rocket to the moon today.

We still live in an age of darkness.

Both mother-in-law and daughter have the same common basic thought - what hope is there now that this young woman is a widow.

Take me to the moon

Broadcast No. 25 - by Dan Baltzer - see http://www.dBaltzer.com

We were walking down the street near where we lived 4 years ago. Asha was 2 and was being carried on my shoulders. It was evening and we could see the moon.

"I want to go to the moon" she said.

India made her first big step there today.

The Chandrayaan 1 rocket left for a date with our loving satellite and plans to drop a probe onto the very surface of our lunar neighbour.

The glory of it all got me thinking back to when I would read old Popular Science mags from the 60s that were accumulated at the Alliance Library at Akola. Space travel was so totally optimistic - and hinted at worlds unknown.

Today we see our great nation sending an indigenously crafted vehicle off into space.

At the same time, the reaction of the man in the street varies. From pride in technological achievement and a feeling that we have arrived in the world - to a question of what the whole point of the exercise is when vegetable prices are so high.

We straddle this huge continent of a country - where on a single day the lives of over a billion people is lived out in so many ways. A bomb went off in Imphal - 17 people dead - but will probably be buried in page 6 of tomorrow's paper. Our cricket team had a historic test win over Australia. A young political leader in search of a mass movement was arrested yesterday - and has brought Mumbai to a stand-still. And in the middle of all of this millions upon millions continue their day to day lives.

Hats off to the scientists. Its not a question of whether we should be building rockets or not. We clearly should. Our 60 plus years of independence have shown that poverty is not going to dissappear because we have not had plans to eradicate it. The rot on that front is a lot deeper. But it would be a crying shame if our nation were only to ruminate on the failures of the past (and present). We have too much energy, too many minds, too many opportunites - and too vast a sea of humanity to be linked into any single strand of development.

Let not only a thousand flowers bloom - but a million. Oh that we could see excellence in all areas of our lived experience, instead of the few streams that glisten (its no coincidence that our beloved ex-president Dr. Abdul Kalam was a rocket scientist).

Art for example. Below are some works in progress by Daniel Baltzer - one fo my brother's colleagues and friends. Would that we would see a thousand - no a million canvasses.


The list goes on and on.

The moon is a picture of a target of excellence. To get there we need lots of folks working together.

I want to go to the moon. And I want my whole country - 1 billion plus - warts, beauty spots and all - to come with me.

Life in a time of Bandh

Our junior rabble-rouser was arrested today. And the city shut down. All 20 million folks in greater Mumbai. No autos and taxis on the streets. Skeletal bus services. All shops shuttered.

This is the fear that we live in these days. Our rowdies have total control What protection can the government give to the shop owner who wants to sell his wares? If his shutters are open, a couple of motor-cycle riding youths will show up, shout filthy abuses at time and throw stones. We saw it when last year when junior Hitler-wannabe was threatened with arrest. This morning was the real deal.

But HIV does not stop and wait for political ripples – big or small.

This afternoon a child was born A special precious child.

The parents are both HIV positive. 1.5 years ago they lost a child just before the delivery date. They were devastated. We counselled, prayed and wept with them.

Over the course of this pregnancy we have prayed with Mr. and Mrs. Shristhi. The due date was Oct. 18th. The baby was born this afternoon in the middle of the ‘bandh’.

Alas – life seems very cruel at times. The child has not cried. They are in the hospital as we speak. Will he be put on a ventilator? Who will listen to the prayers of this family tonight?

Daniel is with them now. He has been with them all day. Our prayers are with this dear family as the darkness of the night falls on our town.

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p.s. 9 .10 P.M.
We just got a call from the father. The baby is fine and with his mother in the hospital. The father has gone home to get some cloths for it and start it on feed as they do not want to transmit HIV to the child through the mothers milk.

The night has fallen - but it has fallen on answered prayers - Baby Shrishti has come into this world - borne on prayers...

Mrs. Maninder’s home coming

Its been two years since Mrs. Maninder left her filthy hovel beside the garbage dump. She took the journey with her new born daughter and a 2 year old with a cleft palate.

In the mean time reconstructive surgery took place on her elder daughter. A lot of love later they have returned to Thane.

Now Mrs. Maninder is home – to a new home that members of a local church have prepared for her. As she is transitions into a new life and a new neighbourhood she is taking her first steps of helping herself and looking after her family.

She walks to work with her 2 kids. Mrs. Maninder is currently working ½ day helping to clean at the JSK centre. She then drops them off at our house where Asha and Enoch are on holiday. We have become a defacto mini-creche. At the end of the diwali holidays we are hoping that a local church day-care will take the elder daughter in. Our prayer is that God will open up doors for the younger girl too.

The next steps?

Mrs. Maninder hopes to support herself through tailoring. We are hoping she will gradually be able to take a larger share of the family finances on her own. In the mean-time, however, the church is helping directly with food care, house rent and some top-up cash for household needs. All of this out of the desire to be true to James 1.27 – to look after widows and orphans in their distress.

We are being stretched as a fellowship as we take this step – and have a long way to go too.

Beyond financial help, we have to help nurture Mrs. Maninder, and help her as she mothers and brings up her daughters.

The most precious thing to give is time. The hardest thing for any of us is to get out of our house and go and meet others.

The road ahead is not easy – but at the same time so full of opportunities for God to change our hard, lethargic and usually ungrateful hearts…

Bed ridden

Ps. 119.18 It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees.

The last 3 days have seen a return of an old companion of mine – deep pain down my back. It is frustrating to be immobilised again – and especially to see Sheba having to do so much work on my behalf.

It is also hard because there is so much that needs to be done at JSK – and each day is precious.

I am however, reminded of a piece of wisdom that Stanley Nelson shared a few months ago. Talking about the importance of work – and of rest – he pointed out that if we do not take our rest on time – God will give it to us all at once – and we will be experiencing it on the hospital bed instead of the easy chair. How true.

Modern Miracles

I have been reading about Jesus’ life and ministry. Amazing stuff. Wherever he went – people were healed, released, told the good news of the Kingdom.

But even then his disciples asked him to ‘increase their faith’.

On Saturday I was in town at a meeting. Sheba was due to come home when a person came saying that someone was very sick and could she come. She made arrangements for someone to look after Asha and Enoch and went to this home.

At the room Sheba found a man in his mid 30s who asked her to end his life. He and his wife were HIV positive. He had suffered a partial paralysis. His fingers and toes looked gangrenous.
He was in terrible pain.

It was a totally hopeless situation.

Just that morning Sheba had been reading about how Jesus had come down from the mountain and found his disciples unable to cast out a demon. “Wicked and perverse generation” he called them for their unbelief. Sheba had been thinking how horrible it was that we do not believe. Its not just a sad part of the human condition, but something really wrong. Something that we have to plead with God to change us in.

Now here was the situation that demanded faith.

Sheba told the man that she would certainly not give him medicine to die. She told him that she did not have any miracle medicine either to change all his suffering instantly. But she did tell him about Jesus – who loved him and who cared for him. She prayed for the man and asked him to pray directly to Jesus.

“Give me a photo so I can pray to him” said the man.

“Jesus said that we should not worship any image” replied Sheba “but in your mind you can think of the brightest light possible, because we know that Jesus is the true light and he is the light of lights. You can also remember his nail-pierced hands which he stretched out for you and me.”

Our staff went the next day – on their own off day – to pray for him.

On Monday in the daily staff review Sheba heard the amazing news that the man’s pain had totally gone since the prayer – and that he was even able to start moving his leg again a bit.

Modern miracles. We must, we absolutely must have faith. Life is too short not to.

Conversion conversation

Does the name Anand Mahadevan mean anything to you? He is an editor for a prominent Business Magazine.

A rather clumsy literal translation of his name is “Joy Great-God.”

That pretty much sums up a lot about who he is at this point. Read his story here.