The Greatest Journey - Asangba Tzudir

The season of wonder and joy is here again, to celebrate the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. Every Christmas we are reminded of the miracle that took place in that stable in Bethlehem so many years ago when the Virgin Mary gave birth to the Son of God, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a lowly manger.

The sights and sounds of Christmas fills us with a sense of peace and joy as we think of the three wise man, of Mary and Joseph and the angels proclaiming the birth of baby Jesus, and of how the World was forever changed that one starry night, as God gave the World the ultimate gift of love: His Son Jesus.

The greatest ‘Journey’ in the history of mankind began when God greatest love manifested in the form of his son Jesus Christ. The son of God took human form and came to Earth with a mission...to heal the sick, to restore sight for the sightless, to free the bounded and to redeem our sins that we may have eternal life. He died on the cross for us and rose from the death and went back to Heaven. In doing so, Jesus Christ completed his share of the journey. Now, the doors of Heaven beholds for those who ‘journey’ well from where Jesus Christ left. It is upon us all to continue our share of the ‘journey’ and try to complete it. Our heavenly father does not want anything in return but he whispers silently, ‘Do you care to complete the journey?’.

Our share of the Journey can be successfully completed only through Jesus. It is clearly written in John 14:6 in the Holy Bible that Jesus is the only way, the Truth and the Life and that no one can go to the Father except through Jesus. Here lies a mild ‘politics’ of Jesus Christ that whosoever wants to complete the ‘Journey’ and meet the father in Heaven, should go through Jesus. He is the only means to this end and it is only in seeking Jesus that we can complete the ‘Journey.’

Baby Jesus has a Gift for each and every one of us this Christmas…He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble at heart, and I will find rest for your souls.” Let this Christmas be an opportunity to ask for Baby Jesus guidance to further our journey towards that end.

May we all encounter baby Jesus this Christmas. God bless us all. AMEN

The tickler in my mouth

I used to be a mischievous kid at school and always ‘enjoyed’ my teacher’s tickler who’d always find 101 reasons to beat the living daylights out of me...the most from my hindi ma’am, who was the scariest teacher at school. I was 'popular' at school for all the wrong reasons – fighting with girls, dirty school uniform, giving and calling names, mimicking and so on. My idea of freedom was nicely nestled quite high above the norms and forms strictly laid out in the rule book of our school. This way schooling was ‘fun.’

On the flip side though, I’ll never forget an incident, when I was punished and even as a kid I couldn’t comprehend. I was in std IV then. On that fateful day, it was recess time and I opted to stay back inside the classroom with my friend, our class bully. All of a sudden some enzymes got triggered and I started singing the chorus ‘He is Lord.’ My vocal sac produced a 'noise' loud enough to catch the attention of our Asst. Headmaster who was doing the rounds with his large cane stick ever ready to beat anyone even for the slightest offence. He came straight into our classroom and demanded to know who the ‘singer’ was. At this, without any hesitation, our class bully pointed his fingers at me. I was ordered to mount on top of the teachers table and stand on a feet. Then he made me bite his large cane stick to the laughter and delight of the 40 odd students. I turned red as a tomato on being made the object of mockery – big time laughing stock. It will create a funny mental picture even as you read through these lines.

The teacher left leaving me up doing the balancing act with his stick in my mouth. The bell rang declaring the recess over, and it was time for our hindi ma’am to enter the classroom any moment. I was drowned trying to reason out what was in store for me from our hindi ma’am. I was already half dead. Soon, I heard footsteps coming making my heart pound to death but to my sheer luck it was the Asst. Headmaster and I was finally asked to get down with strict orders never to sing again. It was only after I passed out from that school that I sang again. I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I ran home that day and I narrated the whole trauma to my mom…as tears collected in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I didn’t go to school for a week. I shiver down my spine even as i wind this story with profound nostalgic scenes flashing across my mind.

Asangba Tzudir

Inspirations to live by

• Poem:
  

The woods are lovely dark and deep

But i have promises to keep

And miles to go before i sleep

And miles to go before i sleep

                                     - Robert Frost

Little deeds of Kindness

Little words of Love

Make this Earth an Eden

Like the Heaven Above

                                     - Isaac Watts

• Quote:
  

"If you are on the side of majority, think its time to reform." 

                                      - Mark Twain

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the World will know peace"

                                      - Jimi Hendrix

• Advice:
  

          'Never speak without reason.'

          'Do the right thing.'

• Offeratory Prayer:
  

...and in giving you Lord, Help us learn to worship you.

• Bible Verse:
  

Thessalonians 5:16-24. It says, “Be joyful always; Pray continually; Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not treat the prophecies with contempt, test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.”

• Earthly Idols:
  

Hellen Keller & Mother Teresa

• Greatest Hope

For i know the plans i have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

• Value of a fraction of a  second:
  

Ask the person who just came second in a 100 metre race.

Book am Reading Now

Remnants Of Auschwitz : The Witness and the Archive
By Giorgio Agamben
"Agamben's moving text on the Nazi death camps asks what happens to speech when the deracinated subject speaks. Although some say that Auschwitz makes witnessing impossible, Agamben shows how the one who speaks bears this impossibility within his own speech, bordering the human and the inhuman. Agamben probes for us the condition of speech at the limit of the human, evoking the horror and the near unspeakability of the inhuman as it witnesses in language its own undoing."
—Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

"What a Friend we Have in Jesus" - The Story

Joseph Scriven
(1820 - 1886)
‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ is one of the most beloved hymns in the whole of Christendom. Its sung all around the World. But people seldom stop and think, “Where did this wonderful hymn come from”? Well It came from the heart and the pen of a young man, born in 1820 in Dublin, Ireland. His name was Joseph Scriven. He graduated from Trinity College and then migrated to Canada and after migrating to Canada, he met a beautiful young girl and fell in love with her. They determined to get married and they were young and idealistic and said, If we have any problems, “We’ll just take those problems to the Lord, and we’ll pray until they are resolved and then we’ll return to each other in great love and affection” and that’s what they determined to do.

The day before their wedding, this beautiful young girl went out with some friends for a boat ride, and it was reported that she said that in the midst of the boat ride, “this is my last ride as a bride.” Suddenly a gust of wind came up, capsized the boat. Everybody was rescued except for the fiancée and she sank to the bottom. Joseph was in his room, and there was a knock on the door, and an envelope was handed to him with a brief, tragic message that his fiancé was dead. He was overcome with grief. What would he do, You know? His whole life seemed to have just lost in a moment. So he got on his knees and he began to pray, and he asked God to help him, because he felt like he was being inundated with this sorrow and this tragedy. And he prayed and he asked God to help him and God was faithful and answered his prayer. It wasn’t long after that, that Joseph’s mother came to him with her own tribulations, and he reached out to help her by writing this song. He wrote out of his experience. He knew what he was speaking about when he said, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer.” – As narrated by Ragan Courtney. (Source: Gaither Gospel Series – Irish Homecoming)

THE FIRST POSTMODERNIST

One may think, Postmodernism, as a critique against modernity, is a new movement. But it ain’t. Do you know where postmodernism was really born? Going by the biblical perspective, postmodernism was born in Genesis chapter three. And the story goes… Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. The serpent said to the woman, “Did God really say so? Can you be certain about what the creator had actually meant when he asked you not to eat the fruits from that particular tree? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruits from the trees in the garden but God did say that you must not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, you must not touch it or you will die. You will not surely die, said the serpent to the woman, for God knows that when you eat your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. That’s it, Did God really say so? And if you violate Gods command you play God and you redefine good and evil. Is propositional truth absolute? Postmodernism really began right in the Garden of Eden questioning about what God had really spoken and was it not possible to redefine his reality and do it on your own terms.

Today, all the major ideological constructions are being tossed on the ash heap of history. All that remains is the cynicism of postmodernism, with its false assertions that there is no objective truth or meaning, that we are free to create our own truth and thereby knowledge.

Asangba Tzudir

An Encounter With Happiness

I am a lukewarm Christian because of the fact that I hardly pray or read the Bible. So my knowledge of the Bible is very limited. I am not trying to offer an excuse for this but I would like to take into account two Bible verse which I feel is a compact form of the Bible and also the very core of Christian teaching. The first verse is from the book of Jeremiah 29:11 which says, “For I know the plans I have for you, Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, Plans to give you hope and a future.” This second verse is from the book of Thessalonians 5:16-24. It says, “Be joyful always; Pray continually; Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not treat the prophecies with contempt, test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.” These Bible verse gives us hope, teaches us the way we ought to live and how we should prepare ourselves for our final destination.

I have my own way of communicating with God, not through prayers but through songs. Most of the time (instead of praying) I sing his praises before going to bed. I love to sing…this is my only source of Happiness. There are times when life’s realities are severe and harsh and my abilities find it difficult to face, I just strum my guitar and sing and behold, my heart is filled with immense happiness, which no one in this world can give. It is through Jesus that blesses eternal happiness. So no matter what the situation and circumstances I am in, I’ll keep on 'encountering happiness.'

Asangba Tzudir

Book Review

HOMO SACER: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 
By Giorgio Agamben

At a time when criticisms indulges in reading cultural phenomena at their most detailed and microscopic level, Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer takes an altogether different route to the problematic relationship between politics and thought. The scope and implications are deliberately overarching, as is the core of his subject matter, namely, the relation of human life to political power. The novelty of his approach lies in his conviction that there are still phenomena in our present that have been untouched by the many recent epistemological shifts and that demands a serious examination of the past in which they remain deeply rooted. (Kalliopi Nikolopoulo)

Hope

The darkest nights ever

Blacker than a thousand midnights,
My perception blurred
'Am hardest hit,
Talking without speaking
Hearing without listening
I fear lest my body and soul gets separated
Here I am sailing in troubled waters,
All alone and struggling.
But the spirited element within
Ushers in, a glimmer of hope
A reality that will bring in a new dawn
And I'll be on a song.

Asangba Tzudir