Sitting here in Rome, in the eternal city, few memoirs flashed off in my mind.Yes, I have arrived a highest place, a blessed place where the most fervent apostle, Paul, has roamed about! This is the place to which the long, heartbreaking journey has lead me:
From my college days, from the active, programme oriented ‘campus ministry’ life, into the most passionate days I had for Him, from the complexity and abstractness of the ‘Mathematical’ life in CUSAT, into the silence of Taize, into the silence of God- where I discovered deepest craving of my heart ,from the Jubilee graces, miraculously, into the ‘Eternal City’.
But there is a silence in my heart. A silence as of the grave! It seems like a distrust in Him, distrust in myself. Indeed I’m in the grave of hopes with desperate situations around me. A kind of hopelessness surrounds me. An anxiety of the future covers me!Will there be a ‘multitude’ again for him in the next years,to bear the fruits of the Spirit? If so, will I be there among that ‘multitude’ ?
His voice resounds in me : ‘Who will go for me? Whom shall I send?’ And I could hear the ‘Jubilee song’ ringing out loudly from my cell phone ,‘We are the people anointed and chosen, we are the prophets, a new generation. Righteous and Holy nation, sounding his Praise...Refined, renewed, in Him, Shine out !’
I remained still without the promised hinds’ feet, still outside the high places even with the promise to be laid to Him. I couldn’t stay any longer in my room. I ran to him, like the deer pants for water, to the chapel; to his refining presence in the tabernacle. I was with him for a long time, tears ran down my face. And there came a flash of fire to me right from him; a hand of steel right into my heart. There was a sound of rending and tearing. And after that nothing but ashes remained, either of the love itself which he had been deeply planted in my heart or of the sorrow and suffering which had been my companions on this long, strange journey .A sense of utter, overwhelming peace engulfed me. I could see the ashes in the alter; with complete thanksgiving, I could say “Here I am Lord !”
I repeat the glorious which had been the cause for the starting for the ‘High’ places. “The Sovereign God is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:9) Yes, my hope is in the Lord. Christ is our Hope of Glory and I sing aloud,
‘Sing for joy, radiant in love...His resurrection is our celebration , and now filled with his power and grace, refined, renewed in him , Shine Out !
