Daily Reminder

It’s 7 a.m. when I step outside for my daily walk. My rounds are always interesting, but even more so this time of the year. I live in a city of 12 million people and in the midst of the masses we live in a colony. Not really a suburb, nor a separate township, but a thirty square mile area of privately owned three story apartments. On my walk I pass the Hindu and Sikh temples, a few Hindu shrines and a park. The streets are not yet congested, but there are a few buses picking up school kids, auto rickshaws loaded with vegetables head for the market and cows eating from garbage bens. There are a few old people like me, getting their early morning exercise and servants walking the dogs of their owners. The street sweepers are out, usually women with straw brooms stirring dust as they rake up yesterday’s trash, which is considerable as everyone throws their trash on the ground

There is a film over the city this time of the year and the fog is thick. Plane and train travel is delayed because of the haze that has descended and between the pollution, dust and smoke from the fires of the homeless who try to stay warm through the night, if the sun shines at all it won’t break through the smog until noon.

Though I like living here, there is nothing aesthetically appealing to this place. My morning walks does not lend to spiritual inspiration, except for the reminder of God’s grace. Each morning I am reminded of man’s fallen condition and what an ugly place we have made of His creation.

I am reminded how blessed I am to have spent the night in warm bed instead of the cold concrete in a plastic tent next to the open sewer that I see every morning on my walk.

I’m reminded how shallow so many of us are in the West who measure life by the house we have or the one we would like to have and how that our service to Him are the leftovers. We would like to do more, but we just can’t afford it right now.

And, I’m reminded that, even though I am grateful for what I do have, whether it’s a modest flat or a mansion, in God’s eyes, it’s still a dump.

I long for that morning walk my Creator intended for me. A place where there is no fog and a river that is not polluted.