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Under an Umbrella

Rains are quite unpredictable…bless the guy who invented umbrellas ! oh the feeling of walking in the rain under an umbrella…the need of a shelter over our head the moment the first few drops start falling…almost like an involuntary response, the brain instructs the eyes to look for shelter and the body invokes our every other faculty in reflex – the hands go over the head or lift any possible inanimate object to protect us from the showers and the legs sprint towards the nearest shelter available. But yes there have been days in my childhood when there was not even a hint of anything like this. The moment it rains, the first thing I wanted to do was run out of the house and get wet !

It was a fine day, the rains had just flushed out the streets clean…the roads and the pavements spic and span and the sun brightly shining. But during the raining season, in this part of the country, you dare not go out without an umbrella. The sun will always betray you and prove your intuition wrong !

Downtown, round the corner, I was waiting for a friend and all of a sudden, lo and behold – the mighty showers of the west coast. It started pouring cats and dogs, in-spite of being the owner of a fairly large,    in-fact a family size umbrella, I was still getting wet. Now you need to understand that here, it rains in a particular angle, influenced by the strong winds that accompany. So unless you hold the umbrella in the right angle against the wind and continuously keep adjusting to the direction of the winds, you will definitely not get back home dry !

Anxious that my friend had not yet turned up and fighting against the urge to quickly walk back home, I was getting a little agitated. Suddenly, just out of nowhere, this gentleman with a smiling face, blatantly, without any courtesy, squeezed-in under my umbrella. For a moment I was just stunned…totally ! I could not react or respond to what just happened. For the kind of person I am, I just could not accept it at all.

But somehow…quiet strangely I did not lose my cool. Here I was in a foreign land, dint know the local language, standing in the rain, with a stranger under my umbrella – have never been in a situation like this before.

Knowing that the prospects of getting kicked out from under the umbrella was high, given the kind of entry he made, this man quickly breaks into a conversation with me with the same broad smile on his face.  As I continued on with this conversation, suddenly there was this deep urge in my heart to somehow tell him about Jesus. I knew that this was from God, ‘cos I would never dare to do that. But I kept suppressing this thought for fear of how this man would react. I kept fighting within myself whether to break the good news to him that Jesus loves him or just remain silent and get over with this situation.

Before I could come to a conclusion, and as the rains subsided, the man walked away, thanking me for sharing the umbrella. I stood there, grappling with what had just happened in a short span – I was standing, it started raining, I open my umbrella, a man walks in, I had time to talk to him and before too long he walks away.

For the rest of the day I could not stop thinking about this incident. Maybe this man will never again get an opportunity to hear about the savior. Maybe it was a God given chance for me to share about His love with a stranger. Maybe that man was going through something very difficult in life, which would take a God like mine to provide a solution and that’s why He allowed this man to walk right into my umbrella…

Have you ever faced such situations in your everyday routine life, where God brings people into your life so that you can share about His love to them ? Maybe it is the taxi driver, or a co-passenger in train. It could be that vegetable vendor you meet every other day or the maid who helps you with the household chores. I don’t know…it could even be a stranger on the road asking for directions or a waiter in a restaurant. It might be that colleague who shares the same desk with you in office or even your boss !

 The point I want to make is this – are you ready to talk about Jesus to the people around ?

We need to remind ourselves that it is a command the Lord Jesus himself has given us - to preach the good news. Surprisingly, God brings about these insignificant and small situations around us to see if we would share the goodness of His love that we have tasted or walk away rejecting the opportunity.

“Everyday they pass me by,
I can see it in their eye.
Empty people filled with care,
Headed who knows where?
On they go through private pain,
Living fear to fear.
Laughter hides their silent cries,
Only Jesus hears.

People need the Lord, people need the Lord.
At the end of broken dreams, He's the open door.
People need the Lord, people need the Lord.
When will we realize people need the Lord?

We are called to take His light
To a world where wrong seems right.
What would be too great a cost
For sharing life with one who's lost?
Through His love our hearts can feel
All the grief they bear.
They must hear the words of life
Only we can share.

People need the Lord, people need the Lord
At the end of broken dreams, He's the open door.
People need the Lord, people need the Lord.
When will we realize that we must give our lives,
For people need the Lord.
People need the Lord.”

                                                                                                       

   ~ Azariah Jerry Manuel