I have not met Mrs X for the past fifteen years ,somehow I connected with her in the facebook.She caught me unawares one afternoon and so we started chatting.I have fond memories of her as a great and unassuming missionary who used to brave the heat and dust of Bankura just to be with us .She used to climb the endless flight of stairs to a room which I shared with my two friends from Delhi out of choice even though as final years we used to get single seaters.Dressed in jeans shorts and tank tops to beat the Bankura heat ,our bohemian lifstyle used to raise quite a few eyebrows,not so Mrs X,she would be there drinking endless cups of tea brewed in the room heater,talking to us and just bonding with us.
I liked her.For some reason,I have always carried a warm memory of her. She was a bible-totting,practising ,hard-working missionary but when she was with us she became one of us ,always game for whatever we were up to.She made us feel comfortable and accepted us as we were.What a charecter it must take to let things be and yet impact us so much so that even after fifteen years she leaves a sweet fragrance behind.
Bless Mrs X and all the others who make those endless trips to reach out to the young people in the medical colleges .After fifteen years she tells me,they as a family still pray for us.
Brought back memories of Thomas who was a preacher in the local church.For some reason things did not work out so the support he used to get from the church stopped.He still had a family to raise so he started doing some woodwork in our place.Even while at his work ,his primary work remained to share the gospel.Not only did he bring some of his fellow carpenters to Christ he was constantly at it in our family quarters,talking to our helps.His primary vocation never changed.Thomas died in a bike accident while on one such missionary trip.He was broken for Christ.
At the end of the day it is not what I do for Christ but the inner work that He does in us that determines what the story of our lives are going to read.
To Him alone be all the glory who is more than able to make Thomas's out of frail vessels like us.
Comments