What is love?

Type “love” in the Google search and it comes up with more than 200 million results in less than a second. Ironically, while being surrounded by this ocean of love definitions most of our hearts’ search engines are still seeking and searching.

Love began in the Garden of Eden, when God made man in His own image and He still chose to love mankind after they broke His heart. Then He gave us Jesus and set a universal standard of love. His agape love (from ancient Greek, the unselfish, unconditional love of God) is set for all eternity as the highest form of love towards which all men must endeavor and which we must emulate.

“You hold the weight of the world
Still I don’t slip through your hands
Your love is bigger
Than just an ocean built by man

I fall again and again
But You whisper, “You’re still mine”
You feel the pain of the world
But You never push mine aside”

Reach by Peter Furler

Love finds the way when everyone else gives excuses; it sees the gold in the garbage.

“Nothing can separate
Even if I run away
Your love never fails
I know I still make mistakes
You have new mercy for me everyday
Cause your love never fails

You stay the same through the ages
Your love never changes
There may be pain in the night
But joy comes in the morning”

Your Love never fails by Newsboys

CQ: cuteness quotient overloaded!

As for me my heart is overwhelmed by love, the love from God poured out into my heart. He gave Jesus to save me for eternity; he gave me Shalom Philip, my best half to give me a taste of heaven on this side of eternity.

Every man & woman is a lover, in the sense we love somebody or something. May we strive to achieve the excellence of love demonstrated by God. May we see the best in our loves, as the One who first loved us. May we be so sold out and passionate, cause there remains: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13 AMP).

When hemmed in by things bigger and taller than me, I’ll cling on to the one I love.

Make room!

Nazareth’s loss was Bethlehem’s gain, the palace’s loss was the manger’s gain, Herod’s loss was the shepherd’s gain, Mary’s first born, God’s only son, became human and made His home among us (John 1), He alone is the reason for this season. He came and lived and His own did not know Him. The sheep and the shepherds and the wise men from far celebrated His birth but the sleeping town of Bethlehem missed it!

Reminds me of a song from the yesteryears,

“Oh Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping
For God became a man
And stepped into your world today
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King”

While you were sleeping – Casting Crowns

We celebrate a “X-mas” without the Christ, what have we missed? Will we go down in history as a people with no room for our King? In the busyness of the celebration have we missed the Christ in the Christ-mas?

“Is there room in your heart
For God to write His story?
You can come as you are
But it may set you apart
When you make room in your heart
And trade your dreams for His glory”

Make room – Mark Hall & Matt Maher 2017

Let me include an open letter to Mr Santa Claus which I had written 3 years ago which I now want to restate.

Dear Mr Santa Claus,

The Christmas was never meant to be yours and you’ve enjoyed undeserved fame for too long. You are just a figment of a child’s imagination while Jesus traded the heavens for the place in our hearts, so please back off and let Jesus reign this day!

Regards.

Jesus’ birth, the first Christmas restored faith, brought hope in a hopeless and demonstrated an unconditional love to a people struggling for an identity under the Roman tyranny. Today as we celebrate His birth, He still promises to bring hope into our hopelessness and love into our love starved world; do we have room for Him?

Behold, He stands at the door and knocks, is there room?

Make room, have a blessed Christmas!

Made for me (Joy & Peace version)

Made for me Toby Mac released in 2012, this is my rendition of the song, edited for and dedicated to my beautiful best half Shalom Philip.

 

She was 26 when she came on the scene

I saw her down the hall & felt that I was in a dream

See she’s from God’s own land which had this brother smiling

Little did I know that I’d be singing-testifying?

I love sunrise but she likes sunsets

I’m always running late & she is always on time

But I like k-love and she likes YouTube

But something tells me we are gonna be okay

 

Cause she was made for me

You gave her to me

I said I’d hold on loose but I so wanna squeeze you

Just right for me and for the life of me

I can’t believe I get to call her mine

And she was made for me, made for me x 2

 

Next chapter we got hitched

2000 miles yet apart

Still grateful to in the same time zone

I thank God everyday I’m blessed in a crazy way

Oh my! give her 10 on 10

This thing we got is cool like shake

I love sunrise but she likes sunsets

I’m always running late & she is always on time

Well I like T Mac and she like Furtick

So we meet in the middle with Planetshakers

 

She is a flower You are the rain

She gets more beautiful with every passing day

She is my flower and You are the sun

She gets more beautiful because of how You love

How You love

I get to call her mine x 2 oh mine

 

She likes slow dates & I like fast dates

She’s into art, I’m into books

She made straight As

Well I’m 6’1’’ & she’s 5’3’’

But tall & short always been a beautiful blend

Cause she was made for me

You gave her to me

I said I’d hold on loose but I so wanna squeeze you

Just right for me and for the life of me

I can’t believe I get to call her mine

And she was made for me, made for me

Work in progress!

I am a work in progress (WIP). I am a sinner saved by grace who still needs saving everyday when I fall under my cross. I am far from perfect but the One who has made me and is still making me is perfect and so I strive for perfection. I am adopted into His family to be called His son, chosen because He chose the foolish things of the world to put to naught the wise. God is not finished with me yet.

Work in progress is a painful and painstaking experience. It involves being broken in order to be made, being chipped at continuously in order to be smoothened. Work in progress is a life-long project, when a part of me is done and ready, he starts with something else. He is always at work. As my favorite author, Max Lucado said, “God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus. ”

Like all WIPs, I’m ugly at times, not a pretty sight, probably even an eye sore at times. Like all WIPs I can be an obstacle for someone or something, so much so that they have to take a detour to avoid me.

WIP call for perseverance and patience to wait for the finished work.

God loves me with my flaws and follies and idiosyncrasies. He sees the beauty in my ashes, the fragrance in my swamp, the design and pattern in my chaos and He will have the final say. To love a work in progress it requires an agape-unconditional love, which my Abba epitomizes. His love finds the way when everyone else gives excuses; it sees the gold in the garbage.

He is the grand Weaver, the Architect, and the Director who calls the shots, the potter at the wheel, and the Maker, He has the blueprint. He is not limited by time so He has seen the finished work and He assures that it’s beautiful. Of this I am confident that He who began a good work will bring it to conclusion.  God wrote the best-seller on my life even before I was born, now it’s up to me to live that life and leave my mark. So I am up and about my task.

He wrote your story too, what are you doing about it?

With my God-sent angel to remind me of His agape love

Life in the 2nd gear!

Up-hill!

Slow and unhurried, life in the 2^nd gear is best described by the word, “despacito” (people understand more easily, courtesy Luis Fonsi), Spanish for slowly. This writing came out of my first hill driving experience, a drive with my beautiful best-half, Shalom to Morni hills, an hour drive into the hills from Panchkula in Haryana.

The hills are where you realize the 4^th or the 5^th gear are not gonna take you anywhere.

Hills are where cruise control doesn’t work.

Hills can’t afford slacking off, demand alertness and dexterity and hard-work not to forget the motion-sickness for the sensitive. The constant paranoia of a land-slide on seeing huge rocks and the fear of going off the road into the valley is unsettling, adding to the misery. Life on the hill terrain is a constant pendulum change of gears from 1^st-2^nd to 3^rd and never beyond that. The feet engage in tap dancing with the accelerator, clutch and the brake (unless you’re driving on hill assist on an automatic transmission vehicle).

Contrast it with a 4/6 lane highway drive, life is cruising  at speeds faster than the fastest cheetah all the while allowing luxuries of popping a pop-corn, taking a blink-small nap, tapping or grooving into the latest single or even stealing a kiss if you’re flanked by somebody as beautiful as my best-half! Cruise control is the ultimate luxury on a high speed highway. Life is easy, life is fast and life is good.

But this is for all who’ve experienced the hilly terrain and for those who drive geared vehicle or at least have driven one, life on the hilly territory is hard-work offering little or no opportunity for the drive to admire or appreciate the beautiful landscape. But there’s good-news for all of us on the upward journey, beautiful, breathtaking sights await us at the top and it’s just a matter of time and distance. The top-of-the-world view and the feeling make us forget the arduous and nauseous journey (if at all it was one in the first place). Not to forget the down-hill drive this doesn’t require accelerator, thank God for gravity!

At times the 2^nd gear gives us the power and the control which the 5^th gear can’t offer. Enjoy the way on the way, all through the way. Remember He is sovereign period.

Ain’t no mountain high, no valley too low, when you’ve the grace and the favor of the Lord and a beautiful company beside you!  

Wanna join me for the next hill drive?

Wait, gotta ask my wife!

Joyance Shalom James

Behold, I take thy name!

Joyance Shalom James

Pause! Take a breath; hear me out before the feminists jump in jubilation and the misogynists prepare to gun me down. The decision to add my wife’s first name to mine at least on the social media platform wasn’t born as an afterthought or as a part of a dare, but rather from the musings of a sane mind trying to make a bold statement.

I, Joyance James took Shalom Elsy Philip to be my lawfully wedded wife on the 15^th of the last month. And as the Lord said Joy & Peace are no longer two but one, so I decided to extrapolate the union of the two individuals to the name too.

Why should it always have to be the wife who needs to change her name?  

It’s not that I do not like my name, I absolutely love it, but Joy and Peace go well together. It’s not that I’m questioning the patriarchy, not that I love my dad any less, but I love my wife more and I want to acknowledge her individuality. It’s not that I like a publicity stunt, but I want to make a statement that it’s okay to stand up for what you believe even though it pits you against the popular opinion. It’s a threat to my manhood as some might view it, rather it takes real guts to be man enough to do it.

To celebrate the independence in the inter-dependence, Shalom & I decided that she doesn’t need to go through the hassles of changing her name to add my name. I do not see this exercise as a lack of submission or lack of respect for the head of the family, rather I believe as the head of the family I should earn respect before demanding it from my best-half.

I know my views are far-fetched with hardly any buyers for the thought. A famous survey by Men’s Health magazine in 2013 found 63.3 per cent of readers said they would be upset if their wife kept her maiden name after marriage. Meanwhile, almost all respondents – 96.3 per cent said they wouldn’t take a woman’s last name if she asked them to.

Here I’m taking my wife’s first name and not her surname while still keeping my dad’s name after mine. In doing so I salute and acknowledge the fact that we’re equals. God meant us husbands to be the head of the family, may it be to lead with example and sacrifice, to give & earn respect before expecting it, to bow down before expecting submission and to love unconditionally like Jesus. May our marriages reflect the greater one to come which will last for all eternity.

Missing rib!

They say the manufacturer or the maker known the best and so it was with man. After Yahweh made man in His own likeness, He knew it was not good for Adam to be alone. Adam had all of creations best unravel (some choose to call it evolution) before his eyes in Eden and still Yahweh said there is yet no helper just right for him. Finally, Adam missed a rib and found the one whom he acknowledged as “one”, bone from his bone and flesh from his flesh. We see God at work when man was sleeping, beauty unspeakable, made in His likeness and whom He thought was just right for Adam. He was probably dreaming when God was at work with Eve and all he could dream of after that day was her beauty perhaps.

Finding your missing rib is no mean feat and I found mine when I was not looking for it (read sleeping akin to Adam). I found my “One”, Shalom Elsy Philip in the summer of 2016 and we were finally pronounced man & wife on August the 15^th 2017, little more than a year since we got to know each other. It needed a lot of divine intervention to convince my missing rib and probably a bit of divine “deep sleep” for me (similar to what He used for Adam).

Joy & Peace that’s what I call us, together, we find our completeness in Him. Adam never told Eve, “You complete me”, rather he said, “you are one, bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh”, man & wife created to become one just as Jesus declared; “I and my father are one”. Unity in marriage was meant to be the shadow of the unity in trinity. Yahweh knew it was not good for man to be alone cause he (man) had a gigantic responsibility of reigning over the creatures of the sea, sky and the ground, man would need help and “woman” was just perfect for that. Together they can what man can’t alone and so God said two are better than one.

I have found the one whom my soul loves and I have obtained favor of the Lord.

God gave me two gifts for which I’m most grateful for and all of eternity would be less to express my gratitude: first and foremost is Jesus the gift for eternity and the hope of glory and second Shalom the gift till eternity ensues after the earthly journey.

“She is a flower, You are the rain
She gets more beautiful with every passing day
She is my flower and You are the sun
She gets more beautiful because of how You love
How You love” – Made for me by Toby Mac

 

From independence to inter-dependence!

God said, “It is not good for man to be alone”. All of creation couldn’t provide a suitable remedy or solution to that so God handcrafted one for Adam. Through the covenant of marriage the two become one. Just like the Trinity: God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one, the marriage strives for oneness of man and woman with God. The first covenant which started with Adam and Eve will culminate with the wedding covenant of the Son, Jesus with His bride, the church. The wedding covenants here on earth are just a temporal shadow of the eternal one to come. Now it is united in Christ till death separates then it will be united in Christ for eternity.

Well God looked at me and probably said the same, what He said for Adam and hence as a remedy to that, on August the 15^th 2017, I’m going to enter into a wedding covenant with Shalom Philip. India celebrates its independence on 15^th August, thus the title: “from independence to inter-dependence”. People ask me about the date and lightheartedly say that I’ll be losing my “independence” on India’s Independence Day.  Am I actually losing my independence? If it is, then it is from bachelorhood and celibacy, to enter into the freedom of marriage, from assumed independence to blissful inter-dependence.

I can reiterate the Psalmist’s confession, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes”. I say so because it was unimaginable for me, who was born and brought up in western India to settle down with somebody from Kerala and vice versa for her. So for her, she required multiple divine confirmations before she was finally convinced that I was the one. But for me God had given me a peace about it all and once we met then I was persuaded beyond a shadow of doubt that she was to be my better or best half.

Marriage I believe brings together two imperfect and incomplete individuals who find their completeness not in each other but together in Christ.

“A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” 

Beauty in the scars

You’d judge me a sadist to associate beauty with scars, but hear me out first before you strike the mallet of judgment. Scars have been underrated and mostly looked down upon with repulsion, hidden away like an unwanted (mis)fortune. We hate scars because they arouse painful, loathsome memories. Scars are aching reminders of a past that cuts down our pride in the present, but they are meant for so much more than that.

June of 2016 was such a defining moment in the history of our lives, mummy was diagnosed to have a meningioma and was taken up for a craniotomy for which she had to go bald. As Nick Vujicic said, “If you can’t get a miracle then become one”, what was meant to break us only made us stronger. She recuperated astonishingly fast after the surgery and within a month joined her rigorous routine as the Principal of K.V CRPF Gandhinagar.

“It is not during the day that the light-house shines the brightest to guide the ships, sometimes darkness is essential to shine the brightest and fulfill the purpose.”

The scar on her scalp is a reminder of the season of darkness in which His light shined forth and reflected through her life, making her a reluctant lighthouse when all she probably wanted to be was a candle on the table. Her scar is a reminder of the strength she drew from God and that she’d have never know the boundaries of her strength till her limits were tested and she was pushed into the unknown waters. Unknown waters scare the best of us because they are like a rude awakening call to remind us that we are not in control and beckon us to rely in the sovereignty of God. Every scar is a flag to His faithfulness and His grace. It’s a reminder that we thrive today because we survived then because His grace was sufficient.

But for Goliath, David would have never known or realized the seeds of greatness within him and his destiny of being the giant slayer. The stones inside your palm may be small but your giants will fall because it’s not by might or by power but by His Spirit and greater is the One living inside of you than he who is in the world. He sees the beauty in our scars because He has seen the transformation on the potter’s wheel. The scars summon us to step out in faith to step beyond the confines of our logical reasoning.

PS: It’s been just over a year since mummy’s surgery and she has bounced back stronger than before into what has been a very happening year for us and her life & testimony continue to be an inspiration.

Good Friday- Yahweh’s valentine gift to humanity!

The Darling of heaven traded the adoration of angles for the scorn of mortals, His throne for the crown of thorns, His comfort for the curse of the cross, paying an expensive price so that we might be bypassed from the road He traveled, Good Friday is the culmination of this most extreme form of love.

Good Friday is God’s intervention by means of personally taking on the man’s perpetual losing battle against sin and death. And when His only begotten cried out, “It is finished”, it indeed was over, finished and done for good.

Jesus, God’s very own felt abandonment at the cross so that we who have been adopted into His family will never be abandoned.

Because of the cross now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and walk not according to their whims and fancies but according to the Holy Spirit. Just like His birth (Christmas) divided our time/calendar into two, His death (Good Friday) divides our lives into two halves 1. Under the law.  2. Under grace

John 19:30, when He cried out, “it is finished” is where the reach of the law ended as it was nailed to the cross completed and fulfilled for us in our place by God’s propitiation.

I’m reminded of the lyrics of a beautiful song, here it goes:

“No matter the bumps No matter the bruises
No matter the scars still the truth is
The cross has made The cross has made you flawless
No matter the hurt Or how deep the wound is
No matter the pain Still the truth is
The cross has made The cross has made you flawless

No matter what they say or what you think you are
The day you called His name He made you flawless” -Flawless by MercyMe

In Good Friday, Yahweh offers a (I should say “the”) solution for the malady that ails mankind: Jesus. He did not come to start off a religion (as if there was dearth of any), but He came to restore a relationship. He did not fit the “Messiah” mould of the Jews and they overlooked Him, salvation through grace was too easy an idea for the sophisticated minds of the Greeks and they missed Him too. Empires have risen and fallen, kings and kingdoms have disappeared without a trace, but there has only been One King who gave up His only Son to restore the relation with His people. And His offer/solution to mankind still holds true: “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23b.

God bless.