Pilgrim's Ponderings

   (A fictional story based on real life events.) Hello. My name is Yahir. My name means “God will enlighten”. My life story, however, is sadly a stark contrast to my name. I won’t bore you with a long backstory of my childhood and all the various struggles we had to go through. But all of these and the company I kept lead me to a not so savoury lifestyle. As I grew up, I found that my calling in life was to voluntarily ease people of some their excess (in my eyes) belongings even if they didn’t appreciate it. Yes, that is a fancy way of saying I was thief. I was a very good one too. Until I got caught that is. I won’t forget that day. I was so sure I would get away. Being so good at my profession had given me an air of over confidence. It was this over confidence that lead me to be a bit tardy that day and a couple of missteps gave me away.   I am sure by now you are judging me for these life choices. And you are probably right for not liking what I chose to do with ...

  As a teenager I watched the movie Braveheart (yes I know it is not historically accurate) and have ever since been enthralled by the idea of visiting Scotland sometime. Since then I have visited the UK a few times but have never really mad it up to Scotland. This year we finally made concrete plans. Besides just visiting Scotland we would be visiting friends who we have been waiting to meet for some time now. You can only imagine the excitement that had been built up to the day. Then the day came! We were all packed and ready to go, when we got told that a friend my daughter had met a few days earlier had tested positive for Covid. Twenty four hours later we got the test results that my daughter had tested positive for Covid as well. It was much more than just inconvenient news. It was annoying and very disheartening. But here’s the thing – we did not have any major discussions or any back and forth debates. As soon as the message said “Covid positive” the decision to cancel wa...

  “And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. ” Mark 10:1   The word translated “custom” in most translations tries hard to capture the original intention but it doesn’t really do justice to this tiny phrase. The Greek word that Mark used here is the word “etho”.  You must have guessed by now that this is the root word for the one we know and use today – ethos. The Oxford dictionary gives this definition for Ethos – “The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations.” When studying the etymology of the word it takes us back to the original and we find there that its usage was not limited to a community context but even to the individual. In its Latin usage it moved more towards a community context. But in the original Greek it would be used to mean a person’s disposition or nature.   So when w...

  A few weeks ago I went to buy Lettuce plants from a lady who had grown them from seed. When I arrived she had these four healthy looking small Lettuce plants all ready for me to take. Now these could not be characterized as baby plants – they would probably have been in their tweens or teens. They had nice strong leaves which were this bright vivacious green and were absolutely beautiful. I asked for any Lettuce growing advice she may have and she very graciously gave me few tips and tricks. A little over a month before buying these from her I had built a little raised bed and had filled it with a good mix of soil and compost and had been deciding what I would grow in this space. So on this day I very excitedly took the baby plants home and got busy planting them in their new little home. When it was all done it looked wonderful and I was looking forward to some great Lettuce. By the end of that same day however, the leaves began to look a lot less healthy. Over the next few ...

  I am new to gardening and all things green. The experiment began with Cress, which is possibly the easiest thing to grow. The feeling of success propelled me to greater heights in this little gardening project and now we have quite a few more interesting things in our garden. One such plant is the simple French bean or the green bean. I bought a bunch of seedlings from someone and planted them in my own backyard. In case you do not know much about French beans, they are a vining plant. This means as they grow they climb up a support structure. So I got some bamboo canes and built a little wigwam (conical structure) for them to climb. I had also read that these young saplings are prone to bird attacks and particularly pigeons, of which our garden seems to have an abundant supply. So I bought some green netting and covered the wigwam with it to ensure no pesky pigeon made a breakfast of my little experiment.   The seedlings grew to plants and began their interesting climb....

  Let me start by saying that I am not a gardener. I have tried a few times to nurture a plant or two. Those attempts quickly laid bare my lack of any skill. Recently however, we moved to the UK and into a house with a lovely garden. Winter has come and is now on its way out and its time to get into gardening. We have neighbours who are great at it and are also kind enough to pop over and give advice. One day our neighbour came across and showed me what was to be done to certain bits of the garden so as to create room for a flower bed. He basically stuck a fork in the ground and pulled out huge chunks of the ground. Following his advice that’s what I have been busy with – turning over big chunks of the ground and making room for two flower beds. The idea (as much as I have learned so far) is to dig the ground and pull out all weeds and roots that are found underneath and then work the ground to create the flower bed   I sat there today in the middle of this project and loo...

  Disclaimer: This article is not some attempt to arbitrate on the Ravi Zacharias report neither will it attempt to draw any conclusion on his eternal destiny. It is not my opinion on what happened rather It comes from my reflecting on my own heart through this season of events.   There are two kinds of people who have or will read the report about the noted Christian writer and apologist Ravi Zacharias. There are those readers who love the Lord Jesus and those who do not. This article is not about the latter group whose reactions to the report range from indifference to aggravated arrogance and all that is in between. Among those readers who love the Lord Jesus there many groups as well. There are those who are hearing his name for the first time (yes, another example of how big the world is). Then there are those for whom he was just another speaker and possibly one they were not particularly excited about. Then are those who were impacted by his ministry in many ways an...

  We all have understandings and images of what God’s punishment might look like and by contrast what His protection would look like. These images very often portray discomfort and displacement as God’s punishment upon people for their sin. As you study the Old Testament you find that “dwelling in the promised land” is seen as a blessing from God for the people of Israel, provided they continue to walk in obedience. If they should walk away from YHWH then the punishment was to be them being displaced from the land. The prophets of the Old Testament keep warning of God’s judgment coming in the form of foreign kings that would carry Israel off into exile. One such prophet is Jeremiah. Much of his prophecy is to do with this coming judgment of God and how the Jews would be taken in to exile.   In chapter 24 of Jeremiah we find that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar has invaded and has carried off the king and many of the Jewish people as his prisoners. Nebuchadnezzar then se...

A sore throat, I hate it. In Delhi a sore throat is far from an uncommon thing given the air quality here. As usual I find myself with one all over again. It’s the kind where it hurts to swallow anything – liquid or solid or even my own saliva (a gross observation but an important one, you will see). As expected I’ve spent a day feeling grumpy about it and sorry for myself. Towards the end of the day yesterday I was particularly grumpy about everything to do with my voice and throat and I decided I would go to bed early. I was annoyed because I had to pass up a rather tasty dinner because it was hurting too much to swallow. I lay in bed and I thought to myself “wow… I swallow a lot.” Remember I said every time I swallowed, even my own saliva it was hurting. I had become very aware of the amount of times I was swallowing in a day. It’s an activity that just keeps happening through the day in the background. Now, suddenly because it hurt each time, I was aware of this background activity...

Disclaimer: This article is titled "The two sides of English experience" but it could also be titled "An apology to my parents and sisters|. Back in the year 1999 I was sitting on a KLM flight headed to the UK. Our family was on our first and only international trip together. My dad used to teach at a Christian university in Oxford. This year he decided to take the whole family with him for a break. It was a summer holiday that lasted a month. One that he and my mum had planned and saved up for. I was nineteen at the time and was being a classic teenager. We arrived in the UK and had friends pick us from Heathrow and drive us straight to this beautiful house in Oxford where we would be based for the trip. Oxford is a student town with a lot of international students. For this reason, in the summer when all the students have gone home for the holidays, it becomes a much quieter town. I had silly reasons to be missing home and even sillier reasons to be a sulky teenager th...