Dear Saints and Aints.

Shalom.

It is 5.15 a.m.; No Hallelujah Chorus ushers in this gray dawn; no anthem of praise welcomes it. No ode to the creator inaugurates it. Only groans and moans and from some - something that would have made my mother rush for the soap to wash out the cavern whence it issued. The strident sound of the morning bell that shatters the quietness of the early dawn, like a well-aimed stone a window pane, was not fathered by any Bach, Beethoven or Handel …

I grin as I imagine the scene in and around the dorms but have no desire to become part of it. Of course there are always some cheerful souls who greet the dawn with a smile – probably more annoying to others than that ringing bell.
It is 5.45 a.m.; outside the hubbub slowly subsides and I now hear the pastor speaking over the megaphone to the assembled Saintlets – there is a passage of Scripture, a song and a prayer. As God didn’t give us earlids the megaphone assures that nobody can claim that he didn’t hear it…

At Prem Sewa a new day has begun!

My day starts around 4.30 a.m. By 4.45 a.m., I have splashed some water on my face, checked my e-mail and made a cup of coffee. My time with God begins. As for feeling tired, whether I get up at 4.30 a.m., or 5.00 a.m., or 6.00 a.m., I feel tired. So why not get up at 4.30 a.m., and feel tired? My time with my God is spent mostly in the listening mode. People frequently look at me askance when I say “God spoke to me.” Amazing, isn’t it?  When I say I talk to God in prayer I am religious; when I say God speaks to me I am psychotic. Cannot two spiritual entities communicate with each other in spirit as unambiguously as in an audible communication? I believe so. This is how God has frequently assured me, encouraged me and guided me in the tasks he has appointed me to do.

I believe that God constantly, in one way or the other communicates with his people concerning the task he has set them to do; though frequently he hides from our sight the many that are for us; the powers of heaven at work all around us. He hides from our view the angels and limitless possibilities and hence so few are willing to step out of the boat, to leave their comfort zone. They see the reality as the world sees it; they see the storm; but some see the hand of God beckoning them. God, hidden though He might be from our eyes, is there and neither waves nor winds can harm us. Brave words! But God wants us to learn to trust Him to make a way in spite of the evidence of our eyes to the contrary that see a blank rock face. More brave words! But God wanted my trust and I took up the challenge.

I never questioned the belief that God was and is with me and loves me. I was sure of the call of God though I must confess in the early years at the present place, I just stumbled along being more concerned with surviving a day at a time then in the direction God might be leading me; I had no grand plan. The kids and the home took the centre stage of my concern. My often intense longing for God was my private matter and, so I thought, unconnected with the pressing needs all around me as I rarely, and then only under great stress prayed about them. I always believed that if God “clothed himself with me “as with Gideon (Judges 6:34) then these matters, in time, would be taken care of. 

Being often desperately alone my mind naturally turned to others who like me received a call from God; who walked this road I was treading. What did they understand? Though certainly not in her league, Mary is my favourite example. Did she understand the full import of what her submission to God’s call really implied? Most likely not.

I think Mary’s experience is true of anybody who, though dimly, senses the call of God, knows that there is a road that he or she must follow - with no destination given but God Himself. The sought one seeks the Seeker and the rest of his life, through deeds great or small, seeks to apprehend Him who apprehended him. And through experiences of great joy or sadness, through happiness and pain begins to see the Invisible and, through the eyes of faith, a world of wonder and joy. That other world, the real world where walking on water is a reality; where we see those who are for us outnumber those who are against us. Where the Power rests that subdues giants, breaks down city walls and makes it possible for the unhesitating foot to step into the river and - the waters part.

After I had I sent out the letter, May 1975, to my friends that I would return to India as an independent, the madness to which I had committed myself dawned on me. The euphoria that hid the possibilities of failure and defeat; that hid the awful things that could happen and the many that might be against me - vanished. My consciousness was suddenly overwhelmed with the reality as the world sees it. I could not possibly succeed. I was mad to even try. Yet that reality that intruded my consciousness then is not the reality that is – it is a reality without God. Like King Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, it concerned itself with things under the sun. God and the powers of heaven did not enter the equation. But I belonged to God!

If you consider me too picturesque consider the prophets and older Hymn writers who often painted word pictures so graphic as to making him who is invisible almost visible to our eyes, helping us, the spiritual illiterates, to envision the God in whom we placed our trust and whom we pledged to serve and - so regain our courage needed to go on.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space,
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

Going back to my claim that God speaks to his people, when I returned to India in January 1976 I came with a definite promise from God, “Go and I will look after you.” Not just with an impression. I responded to that definite promise by accepting it as a direct communication from my father. I came.

Now as concerning that which is under the sun … Things are running well; Bapu continues to do a good job. Of course he worries; it is his second nature; he would worry with a million dollars in the bank. He moans that “on the left side of the ledger nothing is right and on the right side of the ledger nothing is left.” Still the work on the clinic is going on; the building is beginning to look great. I even beautified the garbage dump – the unseemly part of the home. The new playground is a boon; the kids act like the bunch of monkeys they are, climbing ropes etc. I completed the 2010 calendar and now we are looking for a printer. I put it up on Webshots for a sneak preview and you can see it for yourself. The kids get good food and are well taken care of – body, mind and spirit. We have a beautiful home!

Thank you for giving even when it must hurt to give - so that others need not hurt.

Our gratitude is yours…

Frank, Bapu, Yohan and the Saintlets