In Mumbai. 4:30 am. I have been awake for a while.
Mumbai - Bombay to me. Memories come flooding back. It feels like I have come back full circle. Our first date - sitting in the front garden of this very home with J.
I remember coming back home that night and talking about my date late into the night with my friend. "He loves me? He loves me not?" Happy carefree days...
Here I am again. She has once again opened her heart and home to me.
We talk even now like old times but these are different days. We have gone through huge life stuff.
I remember a coffee shop we frequented down the road on Kemps corner- Julius loved kona coffee. Not sure if this place still exists.
The city gets more concrete. Multi-storied buildings - high risers - very high risers and slums, very often on the same street.
So much is new and yet so much is so familiar.
It is hot - even at this early morning hour the temperature is 30 C.
I check the forecast and there is no rain in sight...
and then I hear it.
The call of the Koyal - the rain bird.
It's cry is loud and she overpowers the raucous call of the local crow. It starts slow and then repeats it's cry in a rising crescendo. Do I hear a desperation in her cry?
Is she parched and thirsty and longing for the cooling rain?
I find myself so moved as I listen. Somehow her cry echoes mine - a season of dryness and an ever present and increasing thirst that longs for relief.
The heat is oppressive as the earth and the millions of people wait for the rain to come.
I am reminded of another dry place in another time.
John 4. It was afternoon, the sun was high on Jacob's well. .
On a possibly routine and mundane chore of filling her water jars, a Samaritan woman also came to the well at the same time as Jesus did. Her life was a mess. Did she long for more than physical water? Was she also longing for relief and wholeness? Was this even possible? She had looked in many places it seems and nothing satified.
On that hot afternoon she had no idea how her life was going to change. She did not know that the very Son of God was waiting at the well.
She thought she was going to give Him water to drink, but He in turn offered her life giving waters. "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again."
Loved one are you thirsty? Like the koyal are you crying out? Life stuff is beating down on you - as oppressive as the heat in Mumbai today. You want an escape but a little glass of water will not do it - you need a downpour, a refreshing.
Call on Him who waits for you. He has promised to answer.
In the meanwhile the koyal keeps calling. It gets hotter. All of creation is waiting for the skies to open, for relief from the heat.
Mumbai - Bombay to me. Memories come flooding back. It feels like I have come back full circle. Our first date - sitting in the front garden of this very home with J.
I remember coming back home that night and talking about my date late into the night with my friend. "He loves me? He loves me not?" Happy carefree days...
Here I am again. She has once again opened her heart and home to me.
We talk even now like old times but these are different days. We have gone through huge life stuff.
I remember a coffee shop we frequented down the road on Kemps corner- Julius loved kona coffee. Not sure if this place still exists.
The city gets more concrete. Multi-storied buildings - high risers - very high risers and slums, very often on the same street.
So much is new and yet so much is so familiar.
It is hot - even at this early morning hour the temperature is 30 C.
I check the forecast and there is no rain in sight...
and then I hear it.
The call of the Koyal - the rain bird.
It's cry is loud and she overpowers the raucous call of the local crow. It starts slow and then repeats it's cry in a rising crescendo. Do I hear a desperation in her cry?
Is she parched and thirsty and longing for the cooling rain?
I find myself so moved as I listen. Somehow her cry echoes mine - a season of dryness and an ever present and increasing thirst that longs for relief.
The heat is oppressive as the earth and the millions of people wait for the rain to come.
I am reminded of another dry place in another time.
John 4. It was afternoon, the sun was high on Jacob's well. .
On a possibly routine and mundane chore of filling her water jars, a Samaritan woman also came to the well at the same time as Jesus did. Her life was a mess. Did she long for more than physical water? Was she also longing for relief and wholeness? Was this even possible? She had looked in many places it seems and nothing satified.
On that hot afternoon she had no idea how her life was going to change. She did not know that the very Son of God was waiting at the well.
She thought she was going to give Him water to drink, but He in turn offered her life giving waters. "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again."
Loved one are you thirsty? Like the koyal are you crying out? Life stuff is beating down on you - as oppressive as the heat in Mumbai today. You want an escape but a little glass of water will not do it - you need a downpour, a refreshing.
Call on Him who waits for you. He has promised to answer.
In the meanwhile the koyal keeps calling. It gets hotter. All of creation is waiting for the skies to open, for relief from the heat.
Beautiful thought and I liked the way you related thirst and dryness in our life. Thank you Joslyn.
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