Pilgrim's Ponderings

It must have started with a piece of bread or some other little bit of food. But he took it and nothing happened. He didn’t live in our place, so he must have grabbed whatever he could and run away to wherever his original home was. Soon this little nibble was not enough and the stolen food must have increased. But we still didn’t notice what was happening and really never found much trace or evidence of him around our place. Over time though the grabbing and running technique must have gotten wearisome and he decided to find a corner in house, where he could stash his loot and enjoy it later. He slowly settled in to a corner of our home and once the lights were off his time of collecting and enjoyment began. But now the evidence against him began to add up. There was a different smell in a corner of the kitchen and bits of crusted bread or watermelon lying suspiciously in places no one would really sit and eat them. The corner was cleaned as soon as the bits of food were fou...

Cloves – those tiny little things which bring so much flavour to food. Indian cooking almost always involves frying up some cloves somewhere. Even though we use a rice cooker to cook our rice I have been known to throw in cloves to bring about that wonderful aroma and a bit of a kick to the taste. But here’s the thing – whenever I do, I always put cloves along with other such little additives in a little muslin cloth sachet that floats in the rice so I can fish it out later before serving the dish. But many people don’t do that and so very often the cloves are in the food.  In the UK I cooked a dish and for want of time I didn’t bother with the muslin cloth and so I just had a small amount of cloves along with other aromatics in the curry I was cooking. Once we began to eat dinner, sure enough after about three or four bites I found myself chomping down on a clove. Now I realise that for some people that is a welcome and most savoury surprise. I am not one of those people...

We live in a world where one of the mantras of living is “balance”. Everyone is trying to find balance in life. We strive to find that balance between work and play, eating what we like and health that we like and so many more areas. For us who are believers we also throw in the expectations of quiet time, church involvement, ministry, discipleship and evangelism and so many more things and life seems to spiral down a roller coaster of craziness and insane expectations that often get away from us and more often than not leave us with feels of burnout. It is in this context that being a Spirit led servant becomes especially important. In Galatians 5:25 Paul says “If we live by the Spirit, then let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” Look carefully at this verse and you see the living by the Spirit and keeping in step are two different things. From verse 16 he has been teaching about what it looks like to walk/live by the Spirit. He talks of the kind of activities that we ...

This February I had the amazing privilege to attend a pastor’s conference organised by the RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries). It was a spiritual buffet with a line-up of speakers who were simply amazing. After each session there was usually a little crowd of pastors waiting to meet the speaker to talk, to pray, to share and also to get in a picture or two. I unfortunately am still recovering from a bad ankle and so was never going to be able to be quick enough to be part of that bunch (although I did manage to get my own conversations in somehow). But sitting there on the sidelines and observing I learned something beautiful that just wowed my soul again. One of the speakers was pastor Jeffery Vines. He was travelling with a small team. One member of this team with him was his own daughter and another member was his closest friend, his “Jonathan” (A reference to David and Jonathan from the bible) as he called him. I watched as pastor Jeffery passionately encourag...

As I look back on 22 years of walking in faith and 38 years of being alive one of the many blessings that God has allowed in my life is the blessing of community. I am an extrovert and so I naturally love meeting people and therefore am very comfortable in community. The church and Christian community around me has been incredibly influential in my development as a person and has been instrumental in my faith journey as well. I see this community and friends as vital to God’s plan in my life. And this is fitting because when I study the bible I see that God places a high value on community. In the bible narratives, He is the one who builds communities and around and upon whom eternal communities are built on. When we come to the life of Christ we don’t find a loner. We find community, we find many people around him. It is wonderful to see that Jesus had no restrictions for those who sat in audience as he taught or as he performed various miracles. He did not stop to identify true ...