This week I received a photo from India of my brother, Mark, with Savitri.
When we were children in India, Savitri used to help my mother around the home. In Hindi we called her our “aiyah”. She was part of the family. We loved her and she loved us. Over the intervening forty years we have remained in touch. On any visit any of us make to North India, we make our way to Savitri in her little village. My memories are of my Mum and Dad being terrific with her over all these years – praying and giving and writing and visiting…
She is the mother of a great nation now. 72 years of age. Six children, sixteen grandchildren, four great grandchildren. Mark writes that “Savitri enjoyed sitting there, holding our hands and relating all the family news to me. She was tearful at several times when she was expressing her love for our family. I think she said that every night she goes to bed and prays for each of us, kissing our photos.”
How do you like that? The ironing and the cooking have become the praying and the kissing. Hang on a second?! I seem to remember plenty of kisses back when I was a kid 🙂
nice chatting
Paul
POSTSCRIPT – a few months later I was able to visit Savitri
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Football helps me train preachers. See, when you speak to me about football—or, ‘footie’—I need to know where your feet are before I can understand what you mean. Are your feet in Ireland, or Brazil, or the USA, or NZ—or in crazy Australia? It must be the most fanatical sporting nation in the world. Within…
Having been born in 1959, I don’t remember much about the 1960s. But I have heard a lot. Hippies. Drugs. Rock ‘n Roll. Assassinations. Moon-walking. A quick trip across to ChatGPT informs me immediately that it was ‘a transformative decade across the world’—marked by the civil rights and feminist movements, Cold War tensions, consumerism and…
Beautiful Paul. Going to be so special spending time with you and your family soon aye. She'll have new updated photos to kiss. 🙂