Consider one day “you don’t get up at the first ring of your alarm, instead you shut it off and go back to sleep. When you finally awaken, it’s too late to have a quiet time. You hurriedly gulp down some breakfast and rush off to the day activities. You feel guilty about oversleeping and missing your quiet time and things just generally go wrong all day.” That was Jerry Br idges’s start-up scenario of a ‘bad day’. That scenario isn’t bad for me because it’s an everyday thing. Today was different. It is Saturday.
Friends could be irritating. So! Mr. Persistent rang me up 7am for some men’s breakfast that he initiated a couple of weeks back. Sometimes sleep is all you ever want in the whole world and you wouldn’t care if the whole world around you is crumbling. Reluctantly I woke and I went. Not surprisingly I found no one. “It was just an hour late! Not done!” I thought.
Last week, he made a plan to go for a ride with three others to a beautiful mountainside village. I agreed as everybody else. In fact, I was exhilarated by the plan. However the hand brake of my Bullet broke last week and it was still unfixed. Mr. Persistent offered to help fixing it while fixing his. He’s a married man. He can’t go to somebody else’s place to fix his bike, so I decided to go to his. The problem? Well his house is at a terribly steep side of the hill. Bikers are
supposedly tough and care less and I identified with it. Preposterous? Maybe! So without the front brake, I ventured out with one hand holding a range of tools. Now Mussoorie is a beautiful place with cliffs and abyss everywhere. Our garage is 7000ft msl and the road 6990ft in a span of hardly 10ft. I moved the bike, sat on it and pushed it forward. Like a good machine it moved but it didn’t stop where my will wanted it to. Footbrake generally stops it, but my short leg couldn’t reach it or maybe my reflex was still sleeping. I moved my body at the direction of the ramp, but the bike didn’t. It headed straight to the mini cliff (thank God it was). But suddenly two poles appeared and I managed to catch hold of it literally looking as if it’s all set up. “Oh, I fell” I thought laughing at my own stupidity. But my friend reminded me later “what if I smack my head on the concrete road or even worse what if the 200kg machine fell on me?” Anything could have happened. I just thank God right there looking at my half-somersaulted machine which my friend later termed as creative parking.
When someone involves you in their plan, you either jump in or jump out. Our mood is capricious and it doesn’t need any external force to put it off sometimes. Well, I had a reason today. So when my friend talked about how we could still go for the ride, my mind strongly revolted against it. “Can’t you see what I’m in now? How can you even think of continuing with the plan?” I thought. Friends sometimes prove that you’re not the lone power in the universe and that they are not just shadows. They possess some supernatural power such as persistence, patience, practical solutions to problem when you’re blinded by ego. A display of generosity by another friend ameliorated my screwed up mood with some pancakes he made for himself, but shared. A small show of favor or generosity could change a sea of wavering moods, and even better if they look at your eyes and listen to your sad but incomplete story. I’m telling you only some people can do that! I wish I was better at that.
Feeling of stupidity, self-pity and hurt ego started to peel off one by one as I allow myself part of the life of my friends; in small parts like going for picnic. How I wish it’s not just a one day play and I’m a protagonist. Yes picnic. We hung out at the lawn of the famous church at Mussoorie, St.Paul’s. We chatted, played Frisbee, run the dog, washed the car, and played again. By this time, my stunt in the morning has been an entertaining story for those who didn’t witness it.
Today I developed one philosophical truth: playing with kids is better than transcendental meditation. You don’t have to feel you’re out of this world by pretending you’re out there. We can still see you, hello! Isn’t having nothing in your mind as good as death? At least fill it with some good thought, or better still God’s word. Why do you want to be out of this world when life could offer you so much. Feel the love, try being content and count your blessings and feel blessed. They are more powerful fuel to get you at least to the breathable layer of atmosphere than generating vacuum in your mind. For me, having children around is like launch pad when I’m fettered by heavy chains of life’s reality to fly a little higher and feel the air. I’ll tell you why! Children think you are real. They don’t have a second opinion when they laugh at you-that is if you can make them laugh. If you win their trust, you win some who is real- a maskless being. I understand why some people turn to dogs to achieve that. Dogs will always be dogs! I can feel why Jesus commanded His disciples not to stop children from coming to Him. I believe its more than “Oh he/she is so cute, adorable, such a doll” kind of feeling. I believe He might have felt much loved, trusted, unsuspicious, unpatronizing with these children after dealing with mob of masked men. I thank God for my friends with kids.
Well today, the challenge for me was to make 4 kids (1-4 years old) pose for a photograph with 1 adult.
The highlight of the day was the bike ride. Yes the bike ride!
Honestly at the back of my mind (I do have), I was still reasoning I wouldn’t have fallen had he not call me. In spite of fantastic lunch I was so sure I’m not riding let alone sitting at the back when someone else is driving. You would understand this if you’re so used to riding your own. Good friends persist, but a best friend irritates you by their persistence till you have no choice but give up. I thought he had the right because I agreed earlier. So I acquiesced. It didn’t take me long to realized he did a good thing and I too. My grudge and consciousness of it left bit by bit with every kilometer we left behind. Soon I was the happiest and the most content man in the universe. The wind was cold and the fog so thick that 100ft in front of you was almost invisible. The fog was as fleeting as human feeling- now its here, now it’s gone. But in between those passing cloud the sun, mountain and vehicles appeared from time to time. I could hear the David echo from Psalm 19. Someone so gynormous must have left this finger marks among these mountains beyond mountain. It was so perfect. It made me think how big this ‘Someone’ would be who left the finger prints all over as a proof of His existence.
As we ride, the kuchha road made me ‘look up’, while the paved road allowed me to look around. We sang, we laughed as we wave at people. I was happy I had a great day.
As I write this, I’m curled up in the blanket and my arm and legs are still hurting from the fall. This seemingly eventful day, which started off as ‘bad day’ reminded me of our walk with God in the frame of eternity. God’s people are tempted people, a tried people, often they are suffering people but they are people with eternal hope. We are still under the same sun, rain and storm as everybody else and we are exhausted, tossed and torn. But we have a hope. Having this hope may appear for others as brainwashed or bamboozled or something or a sample of a deceived mind, detached from reality. It looks like it because faith requires you to be sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. Not everybody can see the other side of reality, unless the One who invented the faith-lens put that lens in our eye. Only then can you see clearly and hang on promises like, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”. Sometimes when you’re hanging on the last finger, and you’ve taken your last effort to look up, He sends those ‘friends’ or even angels to pull you up. He will not leave us nor forsake us.
If you have this hope no matter how bad you’re life is now or has been, your end is going to be glorious. We might think eternity is out there, but it starts here. At the end of the day when we took our last breath, when we step on the threshold of eternity, when we see that great light, when we see people wearing strange but amazingly graceful robes, when walk on the gleaming street, when we are greeted by some familiar voices and faces of the once-loved ones, when we gaze at the most beautiful face of Jesus and when we are greeted by the Father saying “Well done my child”, we’d be happy that He kept His promise. I don’t know if I’d remember all the good things on earth, let alone bad things, but I’d like to remember ‘friends’ who pull me up that day. My day has already started, and it’s not always been good, but since I have this hope, and since the One who gave me this hope is faithful, this day will enter into eternity glorious.
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