Thanksgiving

I hate having to wake up early in the morning in order to travel. More often than not it ruins the rest of my day, with my body & mind both disoriented and rebellious. This morning began no different. It was just a little after 6:00 AM when we set out, and the sun had just begun to rise over the mountains. But a few minutes into the drive down hill, and I was overwhelmed by God’s greatness. The road we were driving down had massive landslides from the recent rains left, right & centre. It saddened me to see the loss of property & the “ugliness” of the destruction and state of affairs, if you will. The poor locals headed to work in the tea estates had to travel by bus to one point, walk a distance over badly damaged road, and catch another bus at the other end.

However, as I looked beyond & over the steamy valleys below, a beautiful sight beheld my eyes. (Too bad I didn’t have the time to stop & take pictures, but I know those images will be forever engraved in my mind’s eye.) As I gazed at the stunning hues splayed across the early morning sky, I could not help but feel a glimmer of hope and thanks well up inside of me. I had to gulp down that familiar lump in my throat and hold back tears, even as I looked back on the year that has passed.

Just like my path this morning, my life’s path had been forcibly altered and it hadn’t been easy. I had known the new path ahead would be long and winding, but little had I expected it to have as many pitfalls of it’s own. This past year, of all my years so far, would have been the most convenient for me to simply look at my circumstances and get discouraged, angry at God, and grow increasingly fearful of what the future would hold. But all it took was for me to take the focus off of myself and my immediate path, to look beyond into the awesome beauty that God had surrounded me with, and to know that He had promised beauty for ashes, a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. The God who displayed His power, majesty and glory over the loss, sadness and fear around me this morning is the same God who has carried me through my hardest times and been my strength in my weakness, particularly this last year. All I can say in return, is “Thank you, Lord!” as I lay down my life once more for Him to take, use, mould, form… transform into a masterpiece for His glory.

(These simple lines came to me as we rode down, and they express my thoughts this Thanksgiving:)
As the sun rises o’er the mountains,
The mist akin to a sea
A melody wells up in my soul,
A song of thanks to Thee.
For memories and times gone by,
For the future yet to be,
For all You’ve giv’n and done thus far,
And what’s in store for me.
Take my life and use me Lord,
I come on bended knee;
A vessel fit and for His fame,
This is my only plea.

To Tie the (K)not???

Funny how the topic of marriage has become an increasingly popular and often discussed one among many of my friends, more so in the recent past. I suppose the older we get with our statuses unchanged, the more pressure to be married by hook or by crook, to find that clichéd Mr. Right (or Miss. Right) and live happily ever after. I can understand this well in our Indian culture, with me being in this category myself – well, not exactly, but somewhere there… Anyway, all this talk about wanting to find the love of one’s life got me thinking and I decided to blog some of my thoughts.

To most of you reading this blog post, it is no news that I have been down that road many a time only to be hurt & disappointed (and vice versa to the concerned parties, I’m sure). I am presently at a point in life where I am just content to be single & let Jesus take that place rather than face more hurt & disappointment, although that is easier said than done. However, that does not mean I have been written off the “charts” or am no longer a fish swimming in the deep, wide ocean. The difference is, I’m no longer desperate to “get hooked” or to go find “the one” because I’m pretty confident anyone worth marrying is going to come find me! Moreover, like I quoted an unknown person some time ago, I do believe “A girl’s heart must so be hidden in Christ that a man has to seek Him to find her.” That’s the only kind of man I want to marry after all of my bitter experiences, and nothing short of that will do – a man who first seeks God & the kingdom of Heaven and finds that all the rest falls in line.

One of my friends recently asked me, “What do you girls expect? Jesus?!?” I thought about it, and the truth is, yes! ) Well, at least for me… I sometimes wonder what a hot dude Jesus must have been while He lived on earth – son of a carpenter and carpenter Himself… I don’t think He ever needed a workout because the natural must have been gazillion times better. What??? Call it blasphemy, burn me at the stake if you like, but I’m pretty sure Jesus was HOT, in fact way HOTTER than any currently existing piece of male flesh for sure! He totally burned it up, and He still does for me, for real. No, I’m not kidding. I really mean that. I am completely in love with Jesus, and if anyone wants to win my heart, they’re gonna have to beat Him. So there! Ha!

That said, let’s be practical… marrying Jesus ain’t gonna happen as long as I’m on this earth, so here’s the next best option: a dash of Jeremy Camp, a pinch of Lincoln Brewster, a whole lot of Jesus on the inside, and I’m good to go. Wishful thinking? Maybe… but what am I going to lose by thinking?

So… to tie the knot or not? That is the question… As I pondered this, God showed me a fruit tree with a ripe red fruit hanging on it. I felt like that fruit myself, ready to be plucked. Now, let’s not allow our imaginations wander away & border on disgusting here… but a ripe fruit is good for several things: to be eaten as is, or to be made into a jam or juice or jelly or some other edible product. And with that, a ripe fruit would have served its purpose. But what if… what if… nobody actually plucked that ripe fruit? Would it have failed and not served a purpose? Over time it would fall to the ground, begin to shrivel, rot, and gradually become nothing but dirt. Sad.

I think the analogy is pretty clear, the plucked fruit resonating with the much-desired, fanciful married life while the rotted one represents the unmarried life of misery. But wait… what’s that I see? Several months, maybe even years, down the line I see a shoot springing up from the dirt. Tiny, green, easily mistaken for a weed, but a shoot nevertheless… In a few more months or years, I see that shoot grow into a large tree itself, bearing flowers, fruit & being a home to many a bird… much more than it could ever have achieved, had it been plucked and eaten or made into some other fancy foodstuff. Did the uneaten fruit not serve a purpose? Indeed not! I believe both the eaten & the rotten served their purposes just as had been destined even before the world began.

So here’s my conclusion: to be married some day remains a great desire. However, let not anyone who might not ever get married assume that his or her life is meaningless and has failed its purpose. In fact, God may be able to achieve greater, mightier things in and through your singleness than He could have ever achieved through your marriage. And for the married or marrying, I’m not done yet… eaten fruits must also have their seeds or cores discarded, which at some point reach the dirt too… and we all know what happens after. Therefore, eaten or rotten, you serve a purpose; serve it well! To tie the knot or not, it matters not.