June 14 –The Power of Agape Love
Corinthians 13:13: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Sometimes, we think force and show of power is our strength, and we may win the battle, but we ultimately lose the war. Here is a simple testimony of how Love is a powerful weapon, we think it is weak so we never embrace it, but the Language of Love scares away evil and is a powerful weapon in the Kingdom of God.
All the names have been changed to protect personal privacy.
When I was studying in the Bible College in Mumbai, we used to come back late nights after the night Bible College classes we attended. I was often overtired. One day as I was in the train in Mumbai on my way home, with a group of girls, suddenly one a young lady from the Bible College, Mira, looked at the other girls and said with a cold hardness in her voice, “You people are a clique, you care nothing for no one else but yourselves!”Most of the girls were silent and looked the other way. I was shocked into silence for a minute and then took a deep breath and prayed silently. After a while, I suddenly saw the situation through different eyes. I did not see a hard, cold angry young lady with the wind whipping her tongue. Instead I saw a sad, lonely lady who felt lonely and sad. In that moment, I calmed down and started talking to Mira. I was able to talk with her and by the end of the train ride, I felt I had a friend in Mira.Over the ensuing weeks, Mira called me out to a restaurant after work and I mentioned to her that some of us in the Bible College are going on a trip to Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Bhutan. When Mira heard the word Kalimpong, she jumped right up in surprise and then said slowly. “I have a younger sister, but she eloped with a young man and married him. My father was angry with the young man, so she eloped. I heard she went to Kalimpong. My father had told her never to come back to the house, so we lost touch of her. Now, my father is very ill now and he really wants to meet her, but we now don’t know how to get in touch with her. Mira said her name was Shanti D’Souza. Well, it would be a needle in a haystack to find her, I thought.
A week later, I went for that long trip to Darjeeling. When we went to Kalimpong, I stayed with my mother who was at that time staying on the school campus in Dr. Graham’s Homes in Kalimpong. That night, I happened to mention about Mira to my mother, mentioning she was looking for her sister Shanti D’Souza. The next day my mother casually mentioned the name of Shanti D’Souza to the warden of the boarding school. The warden of the boarding school, Ms. Ruth jumped up and said that a girl by that name was related to her by marriage. In the evening, a young man came to the school campus saying he was the husband of Shanti D’Souza and Shanti would like to meet me. So, he took me and my mother to his house on the hilltop and as I met Shanti and told her about Mira, it was indeed Mira’s long list sister found again!In time, the family was reunited. Shanti came to Mumbai and met her father who was delighted to see his daughter again and welcomed his son-in-law to the family as well.
I learned a powerful lesson from this. If I had retaliated to Mira’s anger at us at that time, this wonderful miraculous reunion would have never taken place and we would have never had the delight to see the power of God working in lives. We have to let go and love with His love and we will experience wonderful things when we do so. If not, we are blocking our own lives as well as other people’s lives.
Rita
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