My Favorite Worship Song Right Now...

From now on, I'll periodically post my favorite worship song of the moment. I want to thank my sister for introducing me to this very transparent song, From the Inside Out, by the Hillsong from their album, Mighty to Save. I think this song is a prayer that all Christians offer up to God at one time or another in their lives. The older I get, the more I realize that there is absolutely nothing that I can do to live "right" on my own. I don't have what it takes to fix my wrongs. I can't pull myself up on my own when I fall. I need his grace and his mercy more and more as each second passes in my life. And how incredible is it that for everlasting, his light will shine in my life when I can't fix things on my own. THANK YOU JESUS!

Learning to Love Our Enemy

This is an interview between Sami Awad, a Palestinian Christian, and Rich Nathan, a Jewish Christian, who is also the Senior Pastor of my church, the Vineyard in Columbus, Ohio. I pray watching this interview will be life-changing for you as it was for me.

Learning to Love Our Enemy: An Interview With Sami Awad and Rich Nathan from Vineyard Columbus on Vimeo.

You Will Forever Be Missed & Loved by the World....

In Our Darkest Hour

In My Deepest Despair
Will You Still Care?
Will You Be There?
In My Trials
And My Tribulations
Through Our Doubts
And Frustrations
In My Violence
In My Turbulence
Through My Fear
And My Confessions
In My Anguish And My Pain
Through My Joy And My Sorrow
In The Promise Of Another Tomorrow
I'll Never Let You Part
For You're Always In My Heart.

-by Michael Jackson

Childhood by Michael Jackson

**This post is dedicated to my sisters**

"I love them (his fans) very much. They (his fans) have learned about me and know about me from a distance. If you really want to know about me, there is a song I wrote - - which is the most honest song I've ever written. It's the most autobiographical song I've ever written. It's called childhood. They should listen to it. That's the one. They really should listen to it."
- by Michael Jackson.


Have you seen my Childhood?
by Michael Jackson

I'm searching for the world that I come from
'Cause I've been looking around
In the lost and found of my heart...
No one understands me
They view it as such strange eccentricities...
'Cause I keep kidding around
Like a child, but pardon me...

People say I'm not okay
'Cause I love such elementary things...
It's been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?
People say I'm strange that way
'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate, for the Childhood (Childhood) I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
But the dreams I would dare, watch me fly...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me.
The painful youth I've had
Have you seen my Childhood....

Another Brick in the Wall

I'll occasionally post articles that I find to be extraordinarily informative and well written. This particular piece below is by a colleague and friend of mine, Pranab Chatterjee, who is a final year Medical Student. His article is thought provoking to say the least and convicting. Enjoy this ingenious piece of writing by a gifted man who draws from his personal experiences to shine light onto a very despondent matter.

Another Brick in the Wall

Another brick in the wall, then, that’s what we are, aren’t we?

Suicide: Edouard Monet: 1877

So, just another brick has fallen out of the wall. Another snapshot in the family album has become a matter of the past, another roll number marked off the scrolls and the rosters, another family torn asunder. Another set of parents, whose lives are forever devastated. But what does it matter to us, the ones who survived? We need to go on. Move on with the stream of life and forget about the lesser beings that buckled under the pressure. We are the selected ones in the battle of existence, the chosen ones of fate, the desired ones of destiny. We should not let the ripples in life’s stream disturb our great and mighty ships of their purpose in life. We should move on within the sterile safety of the stereotyped monotony of our regimented and regularized life.

Well, they say that Anupam Datta committed suicide a couple of days ago, I say, we murdered him. I say we murdered Pritam before him and Ghanashyam even before that. And well, we won’t of course stop at that, the dark sarcasm of life is too funny for us to avoid. Our sanguinivorous appetites are yet to be sated. The hunger for more flesh, the thirst for fresh blood lies within… satisfied for the time being until the time comes for the next strike. When another brick falls off the wall, another snapshot gets its moment of glory, another life is nipped in the bud, NAY another worthless entity is wiped off the face of this earth relieving us of the burden of carrying about the weaker and we move on ahead, walk along indefatigably along the path to excellence. And the ones that fall by the wayside, why, we should kick them out and pave the path ahead with their bones, LIFE HATES LOSERS!!!!

Let me settle down, my thoughts are in a turmoil, as they have been ever since I saw the mangled remains of what was Anupam Datta… let me go back in time… not two days, but two years…

After the long and arduous struggle through high school, I made it to the best medical school of the state with another 153 fellows, few of whom, were already close friends with me. I was to come to know most of the rest of them over time, befriend them, befoe them, love them, hate them, help them, hinder them… in short, make them a part of my life… one of these fellows was a certain chubby, cheerful bloke, Ghanashyam, a long standing friend, with whom I has battled through the tough days leading into the admission into the haloed circle of Medical College, Kolkata. We carried forward the friendship even in to the medical school. Tuitions, classes, bunked classes, idle hours in library, speculations on which girl was better looking, speculations on how good, bad or ugly the subjects were… life seemed to have changed nothing even as my friend and I trod across the threshold of school and into college. As we got integrated into the intoxicating and enthralling life of Medical College, Kolkata, we became a part of each others’ life as well. And then came the first hurdle. The First Professional Exams. As I excelled and soared across the hurdle with flying colors, my friend, though not as good, managed a decent result. So blinded was I with my new-found status and position of pride and pelf, that I failed to see that my long-time friend was slipping inexorably into the dark chasms of depression. Our occasional talks reeked of gloominess and sepulchral melancholy, but I was, even then, too blind to recognize the symptoms. I dismissed them as the usual “medical student blues”, the routine rumblings of the ravaged mind stressed out under the pressure of medical school. Never ever did I dream that there was a sinister storm lurking under the apparent lull on the surface. Somewhere along the line, the chubby cheeky guy had given way to a gloomier, silent and moody fellow. We yet stayed blissfully unaware. Until, one day, when disaster struck… what followed was a three month long tug-of-war with death, which death won in the end. What was left of my chubby friend after it all was an empty shell. The wan smile that creased the corners of his lips even in death reminded me of the ghost of his self that he had become in the days preceding his lethal leap in front of a speeding train. And even as I stood in the morgue, where his post mortem was done, looking on at his disfigured body, his icteric organs, his congested lungs, his enlarged and infarcted liver and kidneys as he was disemboweled with little grace or respect by the attendants, I could not comprehend the entirety of the tragedy, a realization that was to strike me two years later, in another time and place, but eerily similar in its sinister nature.

Two years passed after that. Life was back to normal. We had assumed our own lives as though he had never existed amongst us. Except for the occasional twinge that arose when his roll number, mistakenly, got called out. Or those times when his trademark jokes or comments would pop up disconcertingly, making the atmosphere gloomier than ever. But even these distractions got to become few and far between. We were, in short, back in our struggle for existence with aplomb. But then again, life gave me another rude jolt, another shock, another reality check.

Day before yesterday, as I was sitting around doing particularly nothing constructive in the canteen besides killing very essential final year time, a call came to one of my friends’ mobile informing of the attempted suicide of one of their classmates. As one, we rushed to the head injury room in the casualty block to find a mangled and mutilated body of someone whom I hazily recognized to have advised about the usefulness of doing an ICMR project in the summer. I was not really shocked until I saw the extent of damage that his body had undergone. Having jumped in front of the Metro, he had not only sustained massive mechanical injuries but also terrible electric burns. Like a burnt piece of toast, one of his sides had been peppered and charred and one could actually smell the acrid burnt smell of clothes and flesh even over the sterile smell of the hospital that seems to benumb every other olfactory stimulus. But, death, in all its glory, mocked at the impunity of man and his weak endeavors to deny His presence. The overpowering stench of death, or should I say aroma, because it would have been unimaginably painful to live through what he had suffered, pervaded every bit of the room. The whirring air conditioners tried best, but in vain, to cleanse the air. Even as the last ditch efforts to rouse him from his final slumber were abandoned, it hit us like a bolt of thunder—we actually saw him pass off right in front of us, mocking at the uselessness of the science or art or whatever of medicine that we so religiously practice, making a joke of an entire profession, considered to be the incarnation of God on earth.

Another series of distressing activities, meeting devastated parents, arranging for yet another post mortem to be done post haste, another compellingly similar set of events as I forgot where I was—in the Medical College-Kolkata Police Morgue or the Peerless Hospital—Kaantapukur Morgue… the present indelibly merged with the past as I moved through the well-rehearsed steps of asking the officialties to be closed with perfunctory perfection. It didn’t matter a jot to me that the bloke whose mangled body was being disemboweled inside was hardly known to me, it mattered not that the guy who would become a potful of ashes had ever hardly talked to me, or that there was no better alternative than death for someone who was as badly injured as him. What mattered was he was DEAD. He had died for reasons so absolutely balderdash that one would seem to ridicule the idea had the mutilated body not been present in front of them, twisted into a shape that a human body was never meant to have assumed. What mattered was that he was one of those who fell by the wayside and we NEVER stopped in our rush towards excellence to put forward a helping hand and pull them up. What mattered was that we were as much responsible for his death as probably he was, maybe more. What mattered was that he had killed himself, solved all his transient problems with a permanent solution, but made us stand face-to-face with a number of questions. A number of doubts. And even as the unctuous and placating tones of the powers-to-be spoke to the student body present at the site, about the beauty of life and the uselessness of killing oneself, I could feel the unreal hilarity of the situation. The lip service. The promised mourning next day. The apparent show of grief. The oh-so-familiar official response to the mishap. And then, the forgetting.

What can we do? As I searched around for an answer, waking up in the middle of sweaty nightmares over the last two nights, I felt so weak, so impotent. So useless. Even as I sat on my bed, wiping sweat off my forehead after another particularly nasty nightmare, I wondered what could we do? There had to be a way out. How long do we abandon our fellow feelings, shirk our responsibilities and let people who fall down get stampeded to death by the oncoming hordes of life’s problems. What if, tomorrow, I am the one who has fallen down and desperately seeks a way out? If not for “them” I should at least do it for “us” or even maybe “me”, for if each of us could ensure that we take care of the “me”, the “us”, then the “they” could be taken care of. If we could all chip in with the small things, the bigger things, I am sure, could take care of themselves. I hit upon an idea of a support group, consisting of teachers and more so, students. Students who knew what the hardships were, who knew the value of empathy, who could be approached freely, without doubt, suspicion or fear for a little support. But where do we find such people? Where do we train them to such expertise that they may handle the situation with care and precaution? How do we motivate the behemoth of the Governmental health system into devising such a thing? How? How? How?

The questions harry me, but I have decided the course. I will approach the Principal and Dean personally and try to make them see reason and hope for the best, but whilst the serpentine lanes of governmental regimentation are satisfied, and the red tapes are cut and tied, I will try to move for making a body consisting of interested students and teachers in order to spread AWARENESS regarding this matter at large. If any of you who are reading this feel the same way I do, please do get back at me with suggestions as to what I can do to ameliorate the present situation at:

pranabchatterjee@hotmail.com

and/or

email@pranabchatterjee.co.cc

And I believe we don’t need that education which pushes us towards death and destruction and makes excellent but absolutely un-empathic practitioners of medicine (they should not be accorded the honor of being addressed as doctors) out of us.

And even as I end, the questions asked by T.S.Eliot still reverberates in my ears:

“The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.”

T. S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934

Hope for a New Day

I think it's imperative to start each day and each week with a positive attitude. It is in my hands and in your hands to choose how we will live out this day today. I was inspired by the historic opening of the new Yankee Stadium by none other than Pastor Joel Osteen. The Yankee Organization invited a man of God to inaugurate the new stadium. God is great!! In his message, he stressed that we are fully loaded and equipped as we are to face the day ahead of us. He said that God has already given us what we need for today.

It's a simple choice that's ahead of us today: choose to live your day truly believing who you are or live your life today with a defeated mentality.
Now the question arises as to who you really are.
I believe the truth shall set you free. In this world that we live in, truth is very relative. I'm not talking about that kind of "truth." I'm talking about the truth which God testifies to about you. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, the Bible says that you are "more than a conqueror." So it's up to me and you to live our day today knowing the truth that you and I are indeed more than a conqueror. The Bible says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." This is a word of truth from the one who created you.

I just want to speak a word of hope and encouragement to those who haven't known Jesus Christ as your friend and as your Lord.
You were beautifully and wonderfully created by Him.
He has the most incredible plans for your life.
He gave up absolutely everything and became absolutely nothing in obedience to his Father, so that you and I may have life.
He died, he rose up, and he conquered the grave so that we may have life through him.
He did all this so that we may have access to the Father and to a life of purpose down here on earth and to an eternity that is far beyond our most creative imaginations.
He loves you so much.
If you invite Jesus into your heart and into your life, your life will have meaning and purpose and your life will change for the better.

And for those of you who have lost that closeness with him, please know that he is closer than you think.
He never left your side.
He is ready and willing to embrace you and hold you in his arms.
You and I know that any time we have lived disconnected from God, no matter how thrilling the ride was, it wasn't worth it. It was just eating us alive. We lived with no hope or no joy or any sort of fulfillment. Each day we lived separated from Christ, we were becoming more dead inside.
It is time to come back into his loving arms, where life makes sense again. He will forgive all your sins and take you back just as you are and love you unconditionally.

We need hope more than anything else today.
Hope to dream.. hope to live.. hope to be....
So, let's live this day and this week with a renewed sense of hope and faith.
Let's not forget the truth about us.
Wake up each day and say, "I will have an incredible day today.Great things are going to happen to me today. I am in the palm of God's hands. I will see the Lord's favor in my life today."

The Significance of Good Friday in My Life..

On Good Friday, April 10, 2009, I'm reflecting on many thoughts that are racing through my mind.

What does the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ really mean to me? Has it made a substantial impact on my life? Has it changed me for the better? Am I bearing fruit because I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior?

I was reading from the book of Habakkuk the other day, when I came across his statement to the Lord in Habakkuk 2:13, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong." So that literally means that Father God cannot even bear to see the evil in me. It's not even possible for him to do it, because he is so pure and holy. So there was only one way to look past my sins - - through the death of Jesus Christ. When I try to come to some kind of a very, limited grasp on this mystery, knowing very well that I won't even scratch the surface to understanding it, I try to picture just myself in the eye of the storm. I try to picture just my sins and just the evil that I am capable of doing and being. I guess it's more tangible to do that than to think of the world's crimes. So just keeping in mind the debt that I have piled up, I'm blown away by the enormity of it! Where does it start? Where does it end? So just imagining my sins alone on his back, I'm forced to wonder how he endured it? Now take that and multiply it by the sins of all of the earth's inhabitants in the past, present, and future.

I still remember to this day when I was 6 years old, sitting on my daddy's knee, on Good Friday. My dad had my baby sister on his other knee. He was telling us a story; not just any story, but about the most controversial and heartbreaking story of all time. He was trying to explain to his girls the significance of Good Friday and Easter. I absorbed everything my dad said like a sponge. I was eagerly anticipating his every word. I remember my cheeks being burnt by hot tears rolling down, while I tried to make sense of it all. I was infuriated over the injustice my Jesus had to suffer. How dare they spit at him! How dare they humiliate him! How dare they put a velvet robe on him to showcase him as a clown! How dare they flog him and tear his body to shreds! How dare they put a crown of thorns on his head! How dare they soak a sponge with wine vinegar for him to drink, when he complained of thirst! How dare they bleed him to death on a cross! I was inconsolably outraged. But all the while, humbled and thankful for what he was willing to do and what he had done in obedience to his Father. Little did I know that my dad was sowing seeds in my life then, which would later take root and grow into a loving relationship with my heavenly Father today. I thank God every day for that moment of truth I had with my earthly Father and with my heavenly Father.

I've a personal relationship with this Christ who once hung on a cross. I talk with him every day. He meets with me every day. He talks back to me through the Bible. We have conversations every day about everything in my life from how to be a better student to how much I miss my husband to how to stop being anxious all the time to why my hair has lost all its thickness. In response to my latter concern, he repeats to me what he said in Luke 12:7, "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered." That is a reminder to me on how involved he is with every detail of my life.

Albeit, I am convicted by the Holy Spirit to ask one poignant question on this Good Friday. How much of an impact does Good Friday or Easter have on me and my life today? Or the question I really should ask is what kind of an impact does he want me to have. That definitely brings me to my knees and to a place of increasing self-reflection.

• Where am I failing him?
• In which areas of my life am I disappointing him?
• What in my life breaks his heart?
• Am I living out his best for me or am I settling for second best?
• Am I being his light in this very dark world?
• Am I using my time efficiently?
• Am I really loving my neighbor as myself?
• Is my love sincere or is it mostly fake?
• Am I doing the job I'm entrusted with faithfully?
• Am I a forgiving person ?
• Am I praising God in all circumstances: the good, the bad, and the ugly?
• Do I gossip?
• Do I trust him with everything in my life or do I pick and choose?
  
• Do I bend the truth, when it's convenient for me?
  
• Am I a person of utmost integrity?
• Am I trustworthy?
• Do I live a life of transparency?
• Am I increasing in my talents?

In all of this, the biggest question I have to ask myself is if I'm bringing fame or shame to the cross and to the name of Jesus Christ. The only answer I am getting from the Holy Spirit as I blog is that the race is not over yet. I am a work in progress and as it says in Philipians 1:6, "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

I am a child of God because of the cross and not because of anything good I have in me or through me or by me. In Ephesians 2:4, Apostle Paul says, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved." There is no way I can ever do anything to deserve this gift. Then in Ephesians 2:8, Paul drives it home by emphasizing, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

Although I am saved by the cross of Christ, I want to be compelled by the love that was shown on the cross for me to live in such a way that I make him smile when he looks at me. I don't want to be misunderstood here. I am not by any means alluding that I can win God's favor or grace or mercy by being "good" vs. "bad." The Holy Spirit has been working on me for a long time to help me realize that there is actually nothing that I can possibly do to make him stop loving me. This is confirmed in Romans 8:38,39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." That being said, I don't want him to grieve over me. I don't want his heart being hurt over me in any way. Moreover, I don't want to miss out on God's best for my life. For example, I'm sure I can maximize my energy and my time and thus increase productivity in my studying, if I get the right amount of sleep and if I eat the right kinds of food and if I organize the hours of the day better. I correlate those positive changes with God's best for me. Another example could be to free myself of anxiety. I'm the kind of person who worries about not having something to worry about. Well, it's about high time I change from being that kind of a person to the kind of person God wants me to be. In Philipians 4:6,7, it says, "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." Now that sounds like a panacea to all problems!

This is just like a love relationship between a husband and a wife or a parent and a child. When you love someone so much, it won't hurt you to obey them or to respect them or to love them back. Jesus said while he was on the earth in John 14:15, "If you love me, obey my commandments." His words are curtailed by its simplicity and its immensity.

I want to live in such a way that I remember the cross of Christ not just on Good Friday or on Easter of every year, but in every waking moment. I want it to resonate through my being and through my life. On this day, I am convicted by the Holy Spirit to not be complacent in my walk with the Lord. The significance of this day can't be written about or blogged about or spoken about in any manner to contain it to a mere, few words or emotions. Its significance is of life and death. Because of the cross, I have life. Because of the cross, you have life. I want to remember his words, "If you love me, obey my commandments," and more importantly, put it into practice.