breakdown compelled the couple to spend more time together, sort our differences and rediscover the bright side of their married lives.
Book Review
The superhuman sacrifices made by the so-called frontline doctors and nurses and members of other public services, can ever be sufficiently acknowledged and recompensed. However there are numerous silent unsung heroes of the pandemic who have transcended all socio economic, religious and cultural barriers to provide essential services to the sick and their dear ones. We have all come to know about thousands of people who have provided free meals, open shelters and various forms of financial assistance to those who needed it as a result of the onslaught of the pandemic. The overwhelming situation impelled people to forget their superficial differences and past prejudices, to come forward in selfless compassion to be united in the fight against the corona onslaught.
By Valson Thampu, GLS Publishing, 2021, 261 pp. Rs.250
‘Thought for Trying Times’ Revd Dr. Valson Thampu’s many and varied contributions over the last forty years or so – as an educationalist, theologian, political activist, theoretician, sociologist, intellectual, orator, writer, thinker and philosopher – are well known and appreciated. All his life-long experiences and his constantly evolving vision in his journey with Christ are expressed in the 21 chapters of this book. He seeks to establish that if man has to respond to God’s unconditional love faithfully, then this can be done only when his humanity, his level of awareness, consciousness and thinking of what it means to be human corresponds to what man understands about God’s self-disclosure in the Scriptures.
As the Director General of WHO has not tired of repeating, No one is safe, unless everyone is safe. This is probably the best summary of the universal, eternal truth that we humans are one and need to learn to set aside differences and focus on what makes us one rather than what makes us different.
Mystics tell us that God experience is often by hindsight. as the popular saying goes, ‘Life is understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.’ While one is suffering physical pain and weakness, mental stress and anxiety, in a hospital COVID ICU, the thought of God may not be predominant. Probably we have heard of not a few people asking us pastors and religious leaders “Where is God?”, in the COVID wave. However, after experiencing all the love and care and attention one has received during the pandemic or being inspired by the most heroic acts of selfless service, one is convinced that deep in in the heart of every human being, there is far greater harmony and concord than most people are aware of. A unity that has its source in the all-powerful all loving creator of us all. As St. Paul reminds us: “I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called . . . There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 1/1-5). The prayer of Jesus for us at the Last Supper was precisely for unity. He prayed that they may all be one; even as thou father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me ( Jn 17/21). “When the mind is weak situation is a problem. When the mind is balanced every situation is a challenge. When the mind is strong every situation becomes an opportunity. When enlightened by God’s spirit, every situation is gratuitous grace.”
Exile and return to God’ is a recurrent theme in the biblical narratives and man’s relationship with God. This is systematically expressed through the organic flow of the titles of the chapters of this book and the essence, beginning with Babel syndrome (Ch. 2), Bethlehem principle (Ch. 3) . . . and ending with the Emmaus Road encounter with the risen Christ (Ch. 21). If Babel highlighted man’s arrogance and presumption, Bethlehem illuminated God’s need to overcome various problems confronting humanity (page 13). Luke wrote about the Emmaus Road journey and explained how Jesus explained the Scripture to the two run-away disciples: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Lk 24:27). It is unfortunate that we do not have the written record of Jesus’ explanations, which would have prevented all the often misguided, supposedly scholarly and confusing interpretations of the Scriptures. We are invited for a redeeming spiritual journey with this book and I invite you to join that journey by intensely and deeply studying this book.
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