EBC and Missions...
EBCC Delhi decided that the theme for the month of Feb 2011 will be on ‘Church and Missions’. The topic for today, the first of the four Sundays during the month is “open your eyes and look at the fields” and the chosen text is John 4:35. We have a great hymn based on this verse “Dakkhia in enveldih” and we have always been greatly challenged by the words of this great song. The challenges of missions have often greatly moved members of our church (EBC) in the past. In the eighties, we were deeply moved when one of our own youth missionary, the late H. Kamzathang, who laboured among the Burma Nagas breathed his last in the mission field. The older ones among us also fondly remembered the days of the “travelling missionary box” that travelled through the length and breadth of our land visiting the churches under the leadership of the then missionary to Burma - the enigmatic dynamic leader – a rebel turned missionary (Rev) Pumzathang. The joy, the tears and the excitement and the then great spiritual awakening were memories that warmed many a heart even to this day. Won’t we say we are indeed a people called by God to missions!
Let us ‘open our eyes and look’ today...
The fourth chapter of gospel John tells us of an incident where our Lord Jesus did ‘look and see’. He and his disciples were to go from Judea to Galilee. The Bible tells us ‘he had to go through Samaria’ (a deliberate and decisive action is what we see here). Samaria was a land inhabited by children of mixed origin (since 700-800 BC) and so the people were looked down upon by the Jews as people who were less holy than themselves. So Samaritans worshipped God not in Jerusalem but in the mount there. There was a woman who lived there with a man and she already had five husbands. She was perhaps even in her own community more looked down upon than others. Perhaps to avoid others’ company and their curious look and gossip, she came to a well to draw water at noon time, when other women were not there. Jesus’ disciples had gone inside the town to look for food as it was lunch time. Jesus not only stayed back at the well (by the way, the well happened to be Jacob’s well) but refused to eat even when his disciples brought back food for him. He told them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about... My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work’. Jesus had and saw ‘food to eat’ that his disciples did not know about, he had ‘the will of God to do and to accomplice’. Jesus saw things differently from his disciples. He saw people ‘waiting for the coming of the Messiah’. He saw the woman also differently - perhaps as the ’prodigal daughter’ waiting desperately for the coming Messiah. As a result of her witness, the whole town had the privilege of receiving the Messiah. Jesus had known all along that the people were ready to receive the Messiah like a ripe field ready for harvest.
May God open our eyes...
May God grant us today to have that kind of vision – seeing the ‘ripe fields’ where ‘souls’ are ready for harvesting, where people are looking for the ‘Chosen One’! If we have spiritual vision, we will see where the needs are! We may see ‘seekers’ among the most unlikely places and people. Let’s be open to God to open our eyes. Places where seeds had been shown by prayers. Let’s pause here to have one word about the well – about 2000 years ago, the well was dug by Jacob, the patriarch. The people living here including the woman, traced their ancestry to Jacob as their ‘father’ and they acknowledged that it was him who gifted to them! Jacob’s Well – we wonder how such warm thoughts about their great great great great ... forefather trickled down to them from generations to generations. The name of Jacob must have been a constant reminder to them of their great ancestry and the God of their erstwhile ‘father’ Jacob - who came to be known as “the God of Abraham, the God Isaac, the God of Jacob”. The well reminded them of their father ‘Jacob’ and it probably led them to think of his God – ‘the God of Jacob’. What a great heritage! A further conjecture – the place was perhaps where Jacob did a lot of praying - ‘prayer walk’- talking to his God while walking round and round the well and up and down the land. May be here Jacob, 2000 years ago, had claimed God’s promises of blessings to be showered in time, right there! Could the reason our EBC moving into Punjab mission this year be a fulfilment of the heart cries of people like Bhakt Singh or even Sadhu Sundar Singh and people in the past who had seen a great revival in the past in Punjab! May God grant us vision of the future – of possibilities of great awakening in India!
In Delhi the opportunities...
Today we are in Delhi in the capital of India. God has placed us here to have a vision – a great vision. As we see the great Parliament House and the magnificent President’s House day after day, may we see a vision of what others don’t normally see? A vision of India blessed by our God, the “God of heaven and earth” and a vision of India where the seekers in multitude will welcome and receive the Messiah! May we be like the woman in the well who had personally met the Saviour and readily shared the experience with others (who might even look down upon us)! May we do what the patriarch Jacob probably did – of prayer walking and claiming the land and the generations to come for God in fulfilment of his great promises! Would some of us during our lunch time do ‘praying walking’ in ones and twos or more in areas near our places of work! What an opportunity to pray for India for those of us here in Delhi! What a chance to influence our policy and law makers through our prayers!
Short term missions/missions exposure...
Are some of the young people or any one of us here ready to do ‘short term missions’ or have ‘missions exposure’? There are plenty of opportunities. Take a week or a month break and join our own missionary, Pauzakham. God has put him there among the Muslims and you can go there to help him claim them for the true ‘Messiah’ as they also traced their ancestry to Abraham the great patriarch. Or go to Punjab – the mission field we have been allocated, along with our missionaries. We can do prayer-walk in these places and break the ground so that seeds can be sown and a great harvest can come one day! There are many more places. Do you want to go to on exposure visits to the tribal people in Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh or the rural areas in North India? May God stoke the fire of missions among us once again as in the past!
Our true identity through fellowship...
Recently I read an interesting piece on a group young people who witnessed through their own fellowship even in unlikely places as while doing their laundry. The thoughts that struck to me were
- I was told folks from NE working the central secretariat often meet during lunch break over a cup of tea and it was time of great social interaction
- It is a fact that Christians from the NE are well known for our love of music and our talent for singing even in parts with great harmony
- Won’t it be wonderful if some of the lunchtime socializing be around a common theme we have – like just singing together our popular Christian songs? Our own lives might be lifted up! A lonely Christian might find some encouragement! We might become door-openers for possible seekers? We might actually bring down the wall of Jericho!!!
- May be such gathering/ fellowship will be good for those working in private companies too. If there are some of you meeting together at some time in an open place and if any one of you have a guitar, take it along, have a good time, singing together, humming together and you know what – your Christian love and unity will speak volumes and you will be blessed beyond your expectations!
- Let our Christian background and lifestyles be no longer a secret to the outside world (and let the mistaken wrong label people gave us be thrashed)! Let people know us by our true identity as Christians – worshipers of the true and living God – coming all the way from north east one of the most enchanting places in India!
- Let us remember that we are like ‘candles’ giving out ‘light’ in so many offices, work places and housing colonies in Delhi!
- So let us be people who love missions, who dream missions, who live missions and who live for missions!
(Dr B. Langkham, Director, Partnership Projects, Emmanuel Hospital Association, 808/92, Deepali Building, Nehru Place 110019, email: langkham@ eha-health.org; www.eha-health.org)
