I’ve just spent 626 pages, 25 hours of listening, in the company of a widow, two tailors, and a college student, thrown together in a one bedroom flat during the 1975 Emergency in India. I’m feeling wasted, heartbroken, and stalled. What can I read next? Rohinton Mistry writes like a modern day Charles Dickens. He is just as prone to coincidences as Dickens, just as deft at tieing up loose ends, but hopeless when it comes to “and they lived happily ever after”. The epilogue, set in 1984, left me stunned and sent me searching for something positive to take from their lives. I found two things to hang on to.
I wish I could recommend it because the writing is wonderful, the story is engrossing, the characters are revealed in rich detail (including a dozen or more part-players), the imagery is evocative and unique, and we are so rapt that we keep expecting better things just around the bend. I know that this book will be a yardstick for whatever I read from now on. If you dare to delve into it, you’ll meet people you’ll never forget, and be forever wondering how we got to be so blessed.
From the soundtrack of my life
One of my favourite quirky comedies is Local Hero – the story of an American mining magnate wanting to buy a whole Scottish village so that he can extract the oil reserves in that region. The negotiator sent to make the deal falls in love with the place and the people and is surprised when they all want to sell. It stars Peter Capaldi, Burt Lancaster, and Denis Lawson and was the winner of many awards. I’ve watched the movie a half-dozen times, and I’ve listened to the soundtrack (or parts thereof) a hundred times or more. It’s music composed by Mark Knofler (formerly of Dire Straits). He captures the moods and beauty of the village, and the awesome aurora borealis which appears in the Scottish night sky. My favourite track is the finale: Going Home – which never ceases to lift my spirits and renew my determination to press on. It’s a great movie with a wonderful soundtrack! Have a look! Have a listen!
Lines from Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
It’s interesting how, when revisiting an old hymn, you can suddenly be struck by a phrase or a line that previously never caught your attention. Such was the case when I came across this old hymn from Joachim Neader. I always thought it was ponder anew what the Almighty can do, but, in fact, it’s… Ponder anew what the Almighty will do/ if with his love he befriend you. So that’s what I did – especially when I came to the last chapter of Revelation and ended my, maybe, fiftieth reading through the whole New Testament. There, too, I discovered something new to ponder.
Blessed are those who wash their robes so they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:14).
As I pondered those words, I wondered and marvelled that, one day, I will pass through one of those gates into the very presence of the Lord our God. How amazing! For a brief moment, I could picture being part of an endless procession of believers, from every tribe and tongue and nation, entering into the heavenly city. The thought of it was overwhelming. We, who believe and have been redeemed, are part of a much bigger and better story than we have ever imagined! I hope you’re one of them.
A creation observation – omniscience
As I watch the countless falling autumn leaves on the trees next door, I am reminded of lyrics from Bob Dylan’s song: That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand… and every sparrow falling like every grain of sand.
They say the number of grains of sand on Planet Earth is equivalent to 1023 which is equivalent to the number of stars in the universe – so huge a number you could round it off to infinity. That equivalence is noted and recorded in Hebrews 11:12 in speaking of Abraham and his wife Sarah, who had been childless until she was 90 and he was 100. There we read, Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. Jesus tells us that God knows even the number of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30) and the death of every bird that ever lived. Elsewhere we’re told that he has given names to every star. I guess you’d call this omniscience.
In My Life 
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