A Quick Chat
India is just the place for the most lovely random conversations. At home we might shuffle past someone on the sidewalk, not meeting their eye, maybe mumbling a quiet good morning. On the train it used to be you could hide behind a newspaper, now you just stare down intently at your phone. But here in Hyderabad you can strike up a chat with pretty much anyone out on the street - 9 out of 10 folk will be delighted to talk.
Last night walking back in the dark from Shunem, the Christadelphian home for the elderly, a jaunty figure strides up beside us and wishes us a good evening. He asks where are we from. We tell him - but are much more interested in his story. We fall in step together and hear he has travelled 2,000 km from northern Punjab to find work - roughly as far as New York to Miami. He has found a job as a nightwatchman at a building site. It’s a good position in this city which is one big construction scene with huge towers rising up from the rocky ground. His young family has joined him now he has secured employment and he says they will settle here and make a new home. He was educated at an English medium school in the capital city, Delhi, and has excellent language skills. He speaks Hindi, Punjabi, English and is now slowly learning local Telegu which is notoriously tough to master. With all that education he is still glad to have work as a security guard. He has a uniform, an official lanyard ID card and a job with responsibility and value and a regular salary. We wish him well and ask that his family might prosper and flourish here. He returns the sentiments and heads off into the night on his rounds. So maybe I can learn from him to genially start a conversation and tell a stranger about the man who truly was a watchman on the walls. And about a journey that will lead to a promised land.
A few words, elevator pitch style, to engage interest in the son of God who walked the earth talking to everyone he met about his Father’s offer of hope and salvation. Be a little more like Paul who writes at the start of the book of Romans, ‘That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you’.