Innerdialects

20/40Lent

Abba, 
Meet me

Benhur – the movie is old school, in timeless display of hate, love, beauty, ugliness, war, crimes for peace;

It details stunning moments in lepers valley, and at the Cross. Starting with Bethlehem. it wraps around The Jesus at a desert scene with thirsting Benhur and fuddled Soldier. (Fuddled is my only word to describe him, If thats a Legit word?) A moment I’ve re- watched over and over. Its been called the best movie scene ever.👇🏼

Wait for it. 4 mins almost. I know. Low attention spans may experience pain after the first minute.

20 days into Lent. I’m fasting from negative thoughts. Not easy. I could be stacking gas cylinders in every corner of home, filling up fuel in every can, building a Safe House, growing a veggie garden immediately for a famine, praying over wells already drying in my ‘garden city’. Yeh.

And God said to me, “Scared? You don’t have Me? Isnt My Comfort enough?”

“Yes! Ofcourse!” I say in a hurry. You want to impress Him. He’s looking at me, right through my heart, with a smile. I was in our terrace. Looking up at Jupiter. God smiles at our human discomfort. Smiles because in moments like these, we go to roof tops. Reality bites. And we think of Him. Think of Him with questions like, “Don’t You care God?”

And then you see Him. Larger than life. You see Him in the naked moment. Stripped of securities, you search, ask, seek, knock, you find Him.

Nothing’s really hit my country yet. Not yours either maybe. It can. Like a thief in the night. And you will go looking in the pitch dark night and find Him. That’s the one beautiful thing about chaos. Its a terrifically beautiful storm. It is not nice. I cringe to see morning headlines. Then go sit in a cup of tea and worry about people being hit, not too far from where I live.

Or one can pray. One can stand in the dividing line between life and death, and pray. I believe there are still people who do that, Lent season or not. (Have you heard of the Kailash monk? Maybe next Post).

Just please pray for each other. Heaven and hell hears. And the earth drinks deep in our whispers. Dont ask me not to believe that. Don’t mess with miracles. Don’t you dare sink in anger or fear. This is all too precious to lose in a second even if the sky falls in the sea and the seas swallow stars. Everything moves in an order we are utterly in –

the one thing totally in our control is what we believe in.

May you find Shelter, deep within, where He meets us. Maybe in Springs of Water. Maybe in a desert, rigged in a storm. Who knows.

The view from here is tagged with prophets, head waggers, nukes in waiting, missile farms, boom-shakalaka in each other’s skies in TVs, or otherwise.

Meanwhile babies are still being born. Old people fix dinners with fragile thoughts. Some glare at God. “Its His fault. ” Others sign three fervent crosses on each other’s foreheads, after Evensong, at the chapel next door. Village pastors wear careful smiles. Mothers boil red rice served in its own thick starch. Its the season to fast from selfish desire. Ok, some mothers.

The Communion painting on our wall communes with me.

“Have you been with me all this while and you’ve not seen me, Ray?”

I’m stammering inside.

My precious Lord. I see you best with my eyes shut wide. You are beyond the size of my small planet with all her bruises. And every bruise makes me think of You the more.

Peace.

RN.

🌿✝️🌱