Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
There are no secrets in India. The Hindu masons were amazed at what they
at once recognised as the hand of the Lord upon the work, and they
spread the story everywhere. Later, when they built the nursery where
poor little Mala stood and mourned, they understood why they had to stop
before the verandah was built. Only enough was in hand to build the bare
room; but to their eyes, as to ours, a verandah was much needed, and
they were content to wait till what was required for one came. In this
land of blazing sunshine and drenching monsoon a house without a
verandah is hardly habitable, and a small square room without one has a
Manx-cat appearance.
The story of the rooms has been repeated in the story of the work ever
since. "Do not thank us. It is only a belated tenth," wrote a
fellow-missionary not long ago, as she sent a gift for the nurseries.
Belated tenths have reached us sometimes when they have been like
visible ravens flying straight from the blue above. All the long
journeys in search of the children, all the expenses connected with
their salvation, all that has been required to provide nurses and food
(including the special nourishment without which the more delicate could
not live at all), all that is now being needed for their education--all
has come and is coming as the ravens came to Elijah. The work has
been a revelation of how many hearts are sensitive and obedient to
the touch of the Spirit; for sometimes help has reached us in such a way
and in such form that we could not but stand and worship, awestruck by
the token of the nearness of our God. There is many a spot marked in
garden or in field or in the busy nursery or our own quiet room, where,
with the open letter in our hand--the letter of relief from a pressure
unknown even to the nearest fellow-worker--we have knelt in spirit with
Jacob and said: "Surely the Lord is in this place!" and almost added, so
dense are we in unilluminated moments, "and I knew it not."
Framed between red roofs and foliage, there are far blue glimpses of
mountains shown in this lakeside photograph. We do not see the water
from the compound. It lies on the other side of the boundary fields and
hedges; but we see the mountains with perfect distinctness of outline,
scarped with bare crags, which in the early morning are sometimes pink,
and in the evening, purple. But the time to see the mountains in their
glory is when the south-west monsoon is flinging its masses of cloud
across to us. Then the mountains, waking from the lazy sleep of the
long, hot months, catch the clouds on their pointed fangs, toss them
back and harry them, wrap themselves up in robes of them, and go to
sleep again.
The road that skirts the Red Lake leads through two ancient Hindu towns,
from both of which we have children saved, in each case as by a miracle.
In the first of these old towns there is a Temple surrounded by a mighty
wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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