Poster | Thread | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | I AM NOT OFFENDED WITH YOU
THEN Mimosa went out into the fields. In her arms lay her first-born son, for the blow had fallen upon her in a weak hour. She had never heard of Hagar; but in her grief she walked in Hagar's steps. She hung her baby in a strip of cotton stuff and tied it to the branch of an acacia-tree. For a minute or two she swung the hammock gently till he slept, and then she went away alone and sat her down over against him a good way off, and she cried unto the Lord.
She had never learned to pray, never heard prayer except when we committed her to the love of the Lord, before we said good-bye. In Tamil we have four forms of the pronoun in the second person. There is thou, used by older to younger and superior to inferior; there is a second singular form, a trifle more deferential. The third is used generally from, say, child to father, and properly translated you; and there is one higher still, translated by such words as "your honour," " your excellency." In Tamil classic poetry, with a wonderful instinct for eternal values, the lowest of all, thou, is used in addressing the Deity, who is recognized to transcend earth's poor titles of respect. The Christian usage is to employ the slightly higher singular form.
Mimosa knew nothing of the classics, nor did she know Christian usage, so to her the most natural word was that which she would have used in speaking to her father; she said you.
"0 God," she said aloud, and the words seemed to rise through the thin blue air above her " 0 God, my husband has deceived me, his brother has deceived me, even my mother has deceived me, but You will not deceive me."
Then she waited a little, looking up, and stretching out her arms : " Yes, they have all de- ceived me, but I am not offended with You. Whatever You do is good. What should I do without You? You are the Giver of health and strength and will to work. Are not these things better than riches or people's help?" And again she waited a while.
Then, kneeling there in the open field, she drew the loose end of her sari round, and spread it, holding it open before the Lord. In some such way Ruth must have held her mantle when Boaz poured into it six measures of barley. To the Eastern women it means all that ever can be expressed of humble loving expectation: " For He said, ' Go not empty.'" Thus Mimosa knelt: "You will not deceive me."
The sun beat down on her; the little young cotton plants about her drooped their soft green leaves, but she knelt on, heeding nothing, her sari still spread out before her God: "I am an emptiness for You to fill."
Not one Scripture did she know, there was nothing from the Book of books for the Spirit to take and show to her at that moment. But His resources are limitless, and back to her troubled mind came the memory of a wise word of her father's: "He who planted the tree will water it." Yes, God was her heavenly Gardener. Had He not planted His little tree, would He not water it? She dropped her sari and rose.
Then what happened ? Was it, as in that older story, that God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water and she went and drank of it? Suddenly all her weariness passed. She knew herself refreshed, invigorated. He had heard, her God had heard. She was not battling along as best she could, lonely, desolate. She had her God. " Oh, what should I do without You?" The words rose like a triumph song. With the little gesture of the folded hands which is the universal Indian Amen, she bowed her head, and stood a moment drinking from the waters of comfort. And then she went to the tree where her baby swung in the light wind, and, taking him from it, threw the wisp of cloth across her shoulders, and walked back to her home filled with a peace that passed her understanding.
_________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2005/5/21 22:18 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | THE TULASI PLANT
AND now a gallant purpose formed in her; to the west of the village lay the cotton fields that had belonged to her family. Some still belonged to her relatives. She would work there like any coolie woman, and earn money to keep her husband and boy. And she did this, in sun and wind, and, what was far harder, she worked in the stuffy little courtyards where the piles of cotton were flung in heaps to be carded, breathing the fluff-laden, stifling air for days on end. Ten minutes in one of those courtyards sends one out half choked. Mimosa spent an age of minutes there.
What inspired her, who can tell? She had never heard the command to owe no man any- thing. The traditions of her country lay towards debt, not from it. Her husband, the responsible one, saw nothing uncomfortable in sitting down in it. Perhaps it was the delicate purity of her mind, perhaps the effect of the light from the lighted candle the winds had not blown out; whatever it was, it carried her through years of hard living, and never once through all those years did her hands drop to her sides in despair.
But the years were piled with pain. Every indignity which ingenuity could devise was heaped upon her. For India, kind land as she is in many of her aspects, can be very cruel to one who crosses her law of caste and custom, and a worshipper of a strange God is not beloved in a conservative community.
The Tulasi plant is sacred through all India. It is a small inconspicuous basil and it grows wild everywhere. Some hold that it is pervaded with the essence of Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi, and it is considered to be a deity in itself. Others say it is Sita, Rama's wife, one of the beautiful Indian women of story. Others say it embodies all the deities in its fragile, fragrant stems and leaves and tiny, unpretentious flowers and fruit. Monier Williams believes it certain that it is the object of more adoration than any other plant in India, and so in all the world. And he quotes the prayer to it: "I adore that tulasi in whose roots are all the sacred places of pilgrimage, in whose centre are all the deities, and in whose upper branches are the Vedas." Every day millions of Indian women, to whom it specially seems to belong, walk round it, in its little pot set in the midst of their courtyard or in the temple. And they offer rice and flowers to it, and the childless wife drinks a concoction made of its leaves chopped fine and mixed with water, and the snake-bitten finds healing in its juice.
In Mimosa's village it is more feared than worshipped; for all the people there are Saivites and, though worshippers of Siva consider it sacred, it is not to them what it is to worshippers of Vishnu, or Rama (one of Vishnu's incarna- tions), and so it comes to pass that the plant in that part of the country is left to grow and multi- ply as it likes in the fields, no one touches it for fear of enraging the gods, and it is not enough used in worship to put any check on its growth.
Mimosa saw it growing in masses of aromatic clusters. She badly needed firewood. Its slender stems do not suggest fuel, but dried they would serve her need. If the one true God had made it, her living God, was it His desire that it should waste itself in the fields? But to use it for kindling? Who would dare?
She dared. One day she carried home a huge armful of it, and spread it to dry in her court- yard. The horrified women gathered round.
"The vengeance of the gods!"
" Oh, bitterly they will avenge themselves on thee!"
" Stay, stay, thou fool woman ! Touch it not. Burn the tulasi of the angry gods ! Disaster will follow; the curse will fall!"
The clamour grew about her. She stood quiet in the midst: "But these gods are not as my God. There is one great God, one only. How, then, can the lesser gods avenge themselves upon me? He whom I worship is Creator of the tulasi."
It was a wonderful chance to witness to the truth she held. But the women were furious and terrified too, not hurt in heart, else she could not have touched the plant. It was not affection that sharpened their abuse, it was fear; fear of the vengeance of the offended powers.
Mimosa used her fuel and, to the surprise of the village, nothing immediately happened. But they still said, Parpom.
And she was a derision daily.
_________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2005/5/23 21:41 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | HER second baby was such a lovely little fellow that she called him Mayil, little peacock; for the thought of that gorgeous bird to this colour- loving people is not spoiled by foolish human talk of pride being somewhere in the heart of it. Little peacock meant just beauty, and the joy of it. Her golden boy, she called him, too, and the word was hardly too adoring, for the smooth velvet of such a baby's skin is not just brown, indeed, hardly brown at all. It is full of warm light, like sunlight seen through water on brown stones, and the eyes with their long curled lashes, and the little red mouth, are so many several delights.
What of the scorn of the village now? It was nothing, just nothing. For six blessed months she nursed her little treasure, taking him out with her to the fields, hanging his hammock to a branch of a tree, going to him now and then as her work allowed; and he throve in the pure air and grew in loveliness every day.
Then the rainy season came, and she could not take him out with her. Kinglet, her first- born, was now two and a half, and, after doing the work of the house, she used to hang Mayil in his hammock, tie a rope to it, set a pillow on the floor, put a bowl of food beside it, and say to Kinglet: " Stay, little one, and sit there, here is rice, eat it when hunger comes to thee. If thy little brother cries, see, here is a rope, pull his cradle back and forth till he be quiet. Be good till I return."
And then with a heavy heart (but what else could she do?) she would go out to the fields; and from nine in the morning till six in the even- ing those two babies were left alone, two and a half to tend six months.
Wet to the skin and weary she would return at sunset and go straight to her poor baby. But those eight hours without food or drink left him greatly exhausted, and her tears would fall on his face as she nestled him in her arms and tried to make up to him for all he had been missing. Till the wet season was over, this was the daily routine. Not a neighbour, not a relative, offered to see to her poor little boys while she was out.
But this did not seem strange to her. " What would you ? I was not a woman of the Way, nor was I a Hindu woman." And that seemed reason enough to give. Why should anyone have helped her? She was not as they. And the patience in her face was like the look one sees on the mountains, when the clouds that hang about them in the evening deepen the quiet beauty of valley and ravine.
But her poor little Mayil never quite recovered from his unmothered days. He was as frail as a flower of the heat, that grows up somehow through the red clod, but is never like the sturdy flower of the rain. He was tall and slim, and his beautiful eyes were like stars. He would never leave his mother, once he had her, without bitter crying and clinging, and she dreaded having to part with him for an hour. When he was older, and could sit by her while she did her cooking, he would play contentedly, if only he might have the end of her sari in his hand.
But he was as happy as a bird, and like a bird he sang his own little songs that he made for himself.
"What rice to-day, mother?" he would ask. And she would tell him. And then he would begin to croon a line or two, to a tune of his own.
"What singest thou, little peacock?" she would ask him.
" I sing a song of the rice," he would answer.
And then he would take three pebbles like her three cooking stones and lay a shard of pottery upon them. " See, I, too, am cooking rice, I blow the fire, I fill the pot, I cook the rice : see, I cook it, and I sing to it!" and he would play and sing, happy to be near her. " Without me," said his mother, "he could not bear to be."
He did not learn to walk soon. Someone suggested planting his little feet in the earth, like two little trees. " Plant them deep. Make the holes deep, up to his knees, and press the earth down. Then will he be compelled to stand, and finally will walk."
But Mimosa thought it a cruel way, and in- stead contrived a small push-cart out of some odd pieces of wood, and he learned to walk at last.
_________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2005/5/24 23:41 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | |
BUT before he could walk, another little one came who was to grow up to be very heart's joy. Music, as we see him now, is a child so sensitive, so pure of spirit, that the verse about the child- ren's angels comes constantly to mind. But his life, like his little brother's, had its early troubles. His mother was very ill, and lay in weakness and in loneliness so profound that Kinglet, then barely five years old, and her husband, who, though so futile, was not an unkind man, and who just then was at home with her, were her only nurses, her only help.
When her baby was ten days old she called her husband. He had not noticed how day by day the little store of grain grew less. He walked in a sleepy dream. But for Mimosa no such dreams might be, she knew to an ounce how much rice there was. She had counted on being able to work by now. But the will that had carried her through so much was helpless before this on- slaught of great weakness.
" I cannot go to the fields," she said, " but will you not go to the town by the sea"-and she named it-"and tell my youngest brother how things are? Tell him I am weak, but will return anything he may send. Ask him for the loan of two rupees; two only will suffice." And she sent him off.
This younger brother had been well educated, as the elder brother, of whom we shall hear later, had been. And once, during the long holidays when he was ill here, we had nursed him day and night. He, like his elder brother, had been bap- tized ; but, like him, though continuing a Christian in name, he had long ago turned back to the husks.
Mimosa knew this. "He has never spoken to me of that which he once believed, but surely he cannot have forgotten all? Surely he will be kind ?" she thought. He had got well-paid work as a result of the education given by Christians' money. Would he grudge two rupees of it to help her? She would return it; he knew she would return it.
But after her husband had gone she lay and thought of it. She had never before asked any- one for anything. She felt doubtful. Had she made a mistake?
There was a side room at one end of the house. It had no windows, only a door opening off the inner verandah. She kept her stores of grain there, when there were stores to keep. She used the room for prayer, for it was quiet, remote from the noise of the street
When I heard this story, the passing of the years had softened its outlines; but when I asked Mimosa what else was in the room, her eyes filled with the sweetest smile.
"Why, nothing," she said, "nothing but quite empty earthen vessels. Nothing else at all was in that room that day."
She rose slowly from her mat and, leaning on the wall for support, went to the room, taking her baby with her and calling to the other two little boys to come. They left their play and followed her in. Then she partly shut the door-not quite, lest the darkness should trouble the children- and with her arms round them she told her Father just what she had done, how she had never done so before, how she would understand if it could not be as she had asked, how she would know then that He had some other way to come to her relief. "And it will be well, Father; however You do, it will be well."
Her husband returned. A walk to and fro of thirty miles had been for nothing, for he had not brought back any money. " No," the younger brother had said, forgetting the kind ways of his land, " she is weak. How can I know she will ever be strong enough to work and return it?"
Then Mimosa took her little three into that dim room again. The larger empty pots stood on the floor, the smaller ones were heaped in a corner. " Father, it is well," she said. " All that You do is well."
But the children's food? She paused for a minute, then in their hearing said : " O Father, it cannot be that Your little ones are to be hungry, and yet it appears to be so. I do not understand it, but it is well." And she led them out of the empty room and shut the door.
Now, among her relatives was one, only a dis- tant relative, but so connected that for her to work in his fields was as if Ruth worked in the corn- fields of Boaz; and he was a kind and a just man. He had observed Mimosa; he knew that, wherever she was, the work was done faithfully, and there was no need to overlook it. He came now to inquire when he might hope to have her back again.
She told him that she could not say when she could return, for she could not regain her strength.
"Then send thy husband," was his not un- natural rejoinder; and he would have gone, but, noticing her thin, tired face, he drew the truth from her.
"This cannot be! I will not let it be!" he exclaimed. And he sent at once a supply for six days, enough to stir up the poor, slack husband to turn his hand to some honest work, so that the loan was soon returned, enough to cheer the soul of the wife, who saw in it the loving hand of her God. Once more she and her children went into the dark little room, now furnished with grain, and to her grateful faith it was an illuminated place.
_________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2005/5/28 0:44 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | DID SHE NOT BURN THE TULASI ?
LITTLE MAYIL was three, and his small brother, a chubby, glowing baby, had just begun to find his way all over the house on eager, uncertain little feet when one evening at dusk, while she prepared the evening meal, Mimosa was startled by a cry from her husband and ran to him on the outer verandah. See, see! A thorn has run into my right foots ankle!
But there was no thorn; it must have been a snake. No snake could be found. It had stung the foot and then glided off into the twilight.
A snake! A snake! No call in all India can more quickly gather a crowd. In the twink- ling of an eye, as it seemed, the house was full of people, commiserating, inquiring, advising, de- claiming, prophesying death and destruction. It was only the usual crowd that attends upon all excitements and completes all confusions; but in and out of it and through it ran real emotion, real distress. Relatives wailed aloud, women tore their hair, and beat themselves, and violently knocked their heads against whatever hard thing lay near. To everyone poor Mimosas husband was as good as dead.
Meanwhile, thus encouraged, the poison as- cended to the skull until the bitten man was in desperate pain, as if the bones were being cleft in two, and the sympathetic clamour waxed louder and more excited, and the street filled as half the village turned out to mourn and lament his rapidly approaching death.
And in the midst was Mimosa, doing what she could to relieve him, paying no heed to the sibi- lant whisper that presently began to fill the room like the hissing of a snake. It is she! It is she! It is she that has swallowed her husbands life. It is she! It is she! Did she not burn the tulasi ?
The excitement subsided, for her husband did not die, but lay very ill and tormented with pain, and she knelt by the stricken man, and she prayed, crying upon her God, the God of gods, and she went into the little dark room and held out her sari in supplication to Him. And she nursed him with all the skill she knew, putting on poultices of fine-chopped rice straw, and feed- ing him with tempting food. And her faithful, tender heart rejoiced exceedingly when at last he was out of danger of death; but he was blind and he was mad. Blind and mad on her brave hands ! _________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2007/4/29 19:38 | Profile | crsschk Member
Joined: 2003/6/11 Posts: 9192 Santa Clara, CA
| Re: | | Brother, it has been a long time. Hope it is well with you. _________________ Mike Balog
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| 2007/4/29 21:41 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | Hello Mike,
boy howdy, time flies when the Lord is turning your world upside down :)
I am doing well..thanks
Karsten _________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2007/5/1 0:00 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | [b]Seed Corn[/b]
IT was just then, then in her desperate hour, that succour came.
There were a few Christian families in the village, but none of them took any notice of Mimosa; for, with the exception of one family, they were of another caste, and they were all of the kind known as Name-Christians. It is easy to blame them and wonder at their lovelessness but if they had interfered in her affairs it is not likely they could have continued to live peace- fully in the village. Her caste would have made life most unpleasant for them. Only a very ardent love will face things being made uncom- fortable, and is ardent love found everywhere? The one Christian family belonging to Mimosas caste was confessedly nominal-Christian only because the grandfather and grandmother had joined the Way years ago, and, being conserva- tive in feeling, the family stayed on in the re- ligion. But between its kind of Christianity and Hinduism pure and simple there had never been much of a hedge, and the hedge, such as it was, had many gaps now, through which one might comfortably creep. To such, a converted, en- lightened Mimosa would have been very un- welcome.
But the old grannie who was not nominal still lived. Her picture, drawn once for all will be found in Fabers Old Labourer.
What doth God get from him ? His very mind is dim, Too weak to love, and too obtuse to fear. Is there glory in his strife? Is there meaning in his life? Can God hold such a thing-like person dear?
Thing-like person ? So she may have seemed; but she was a Kings messenger. She had been away from her village for some time, and now returned, very old, very stupid, very ignorant. She had never learned to read, and she had long ago forgotten or ceased to be able to tell any Bible story she had ever known. The very name of Jesus our Lord seems to have slipped from her; she only spoke of God, using a word she might have used if she had been a Hindu; but she remembered it meant Father, and this was the word she gave Mimosa, to whom every lightest syllable was a crumb from the loaf of life.
He will never forsake you; He has never forsaken me. Meditate on Him and He will not forsake you. In Heaven (she used the word that means Release) there is no pain. To that good place He will take you. He will wonderfully lead you. In every least thing He will wonder- fully lead you.
And she repeated this over, as the aged will, and said: He who is God is your Father. He will wonderfully lead you, in every least thing He will wonderfully lead you.
Soon afterwards she lost the little memory she had, and no one knew what her thoughts were. But she heard the angels sing when she was dying.
One other help was given.
In Mimosas village there was a room where the Christians worshipped, and in the same room the children of their families were taught by a loud-voiced teacher, who chanted his lessons in a sing-song tone, caught up and echoed down the street by the children.
One day when Mimosa was passing she heard the verse being chanted.
Do not rub on ashes, Do not offer matted hair to idols. The boast of the boaster is like the bite of the snake; When the Coming King arrives to judge, excuses will not pass with Him.
It was rather a medley of words, tossed together more because of their Tamil sound than for mental affinity. The gist of it, however, caught her fancy, so the jostle of ideas did not matter. Sivas ashes, the matted, undressed hair of the devotee offered to the gods, the prideful boast that falls before the Coming King-a new name this-led straight to a new idea. Her Lord must be coming back to the world. That was the one arresting thought.
We can gather up the less than an infants fistful of seed corn given to Mimosa. We can count the seeds, they were so few: there were nine. That God is, that He loves, guides, and, being the God of gods, is all-powerful, that He listens when we pray, that as a Father we may think of Him and that He who plants the tree will water it. That the Place of Release is much better than this world, for there is no pain there, and that the Lord who lived here before will come back. She had also heard that some time, at the last, there would be a judgment and excuses would not stand. But this event felt too remote to find much place in her theology.
Of her Saviour as Christ crucified she knew nothing yet. In the few minutes she was with us we could only begin to tell His story, and chiefly we spoke of Him as the Lord who loved her. But she had seen Him without knowing Him. Who is the Lord, that I might believe on Him ? And before the Saviour of the world had time to answer, It is He that talketh with thee, she was caught away. But what can hinder the following power of the love of Christ? And who can measure the force of the life of a seed? Open one of earths little seeds and find the plant that is to be, carved in polished ivory. See the packing of the nourishment required. See, and worship and adore.
Of all the stories we have touched since we came to India, hardly one has humbled us so much, as we thought of our faithless fears for the little Mimosa. But hardly one has lifted us so high in adoration, and in wonder, and in awe. _________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2007/5/1 0:19 | Profile | swsojourner Member
Joined: 2003/10/3 Posts: 167
| Re: | | [b]Backgrounds[/b]
ONE evening, while these things were happening to Mimosa, we at Dohnavur spent an hour with the polariscope just acquired for our microscope. Joyfully we tried the different combinations offered by polarizer, selenite, and mirror. Feathery crystal of barium platino-cyanide, like sprays of peacocks feathers, fairy cornucopia from a fern, the little thorny marvel of a soles scale-these and a score of others held us en- chanted. Then as the blues and lilacs and violets and purples paled into something like the steel- blue of sheet lightning, we wanted the indigo of the thunder-cloud for background, and for those opalescent seashell colours, that are like nothing earthly, but must be sought for in air and water, we wanted the beryl of the sea; and so it went on till we knew the perfect background for each delight; the difficulty was to get it.
We had just touched perfection with an ex- quisite blue against brown like the bark of a tree -only that polariscope colours are never flat but always, as it were, an atmosphere-the little spikes on the soles scale were gleaming poniards, and iridescent lights played on the plated armour; not a pearly tint was lost, when one of the children, eagerly sharing this pleasure with us, moved the adjustments and lost the perfect foil.
We tried to recover it, but in vain. We did not know the laws of light well enough to find it. Or it may have been that the setting sun had dropped his cooler tones and was only all red flame. Whatever the cause, till days afterwards, when we found it again, we thought of it as a kind of little, visible, lost chord, beautiful, elusive, within the fraction of a turn of a wheel, but out of reach of our commanding. If only we had better known the laws of light, if only we could have stayed the going down of the sun, should we not have found it with a touch ?
We all have our small and private windows which look out upon great matters. This little clear window did for us that day look out upon far fields. What if we could look through some heavenly polariscope and read, as, perhaps, the angels read, the meaning of the background for the colours of our lives? But then we should miss the blessing of those who do not see and yet believe.
It is difficult to imagine oneself stripped of all helps to faith, whether from the text of the Book itself or these its illuminated illustrations; but if this story is to be understood, and not merely taken at a run and forgotten, there must be some mental effort here. Mimosa stood alone among her people, a woman charmed by a beauty she could not show to them. Round her were the blazing streets, the little, hot houses, the curious, unsympathetic faces, the crowding work of life. But always it was as if One only just out of sight were moving through those streets with her. What He did with her was good. Was He not all-powerful, so that He could direct everything? Had He not shown her by a thousand secret signs that she was loved ? Would she, who was only a human mother, deny one good thing to her little son if she had the power to grant it? No more would He.
In this way, by the low-set stepping-stones that lead across the stream that divides the material from the spiritual, she found herself in a place where nothing could shake her. The strange colours of her background could not perplex her. And this was what she really meant when she said, not asking for blue days, but looking up steadfastly into grey skies, beaten by rain and wind, I am not offended with You, no, not even while her poor husband lay mad and blind, and the people pointed at her and said : Did we not say Parpom ? _________________ Karsten Nordmo
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| 2007/5/1 23:08 | Profile | philologos Member
Joined: 2003/7/18 Posts: 6566 Reading, UK
| Re: | | I have long loved the story of Mimosa. It is beautifully told as you say and is, to me, a thrilling testimony to the fact that God does not leave himself without a witness. Mimosa pursued those tiny sparkles of insight that God gave her through a pagan darkness as thick as Egypts, but pursue she did, and having diligently sought, she found.
She reminds me of Rahab who, while the 2 spies returned to the comfort and fellowship of the camp, maintained her lonely vigil of faith in Jericho. Little wonder that James puts her alongside Abraham as a supreme example of faith. When 'the roll is called up yonder' I think we shall find many Mimosas and the Mimosas may wear heavier crowns than many a preacher. _________________ Ron Bailey
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| 2007/5/2 1:16 | Profile |
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