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A Missionary with Lantern

  • Writer: Ebenezer Veerasingam
    Ebenezer Veerasingam
  • Oct 21, 2019
  • 2 min read

Bullock Carts loaded with praises

Fishing Boats filled with thanksgiving

Paddy fields in abundance of testimonies

And a lagoon that’s a witness of the Lord's story.


Someone began the voyage

Twin centuries ago,

With a lantern in one hand

The scriptures in the other

God's mission in the heart and whispers

And landed in the banks of the lagoon

Adorned with the Singing Fish.

The great arrival of the First Methodist Missionary;

William Ault in Batticaloa.


A visitor observes an old church

Seated under a Banyan tree

With a Google Map in hand,

Quenching the thirst with Buttermilk

In the season of Harvest,

With a remembrance of the eighteen-hundreds.


A flourishing School in its left,

A concealed Hospital further,

And a community of civilised families around,

With respectable livelihoods within.

For the Nations United

Education and Health are new additions,

But for the missionaries,

These were essentials of life

Two hundred years ago,

For the humankind to flourish.

How precious are the seeds they planted

With visions of assurance from God.


Children play around the tombs

Placed in the corner of the church premises

With British names carved on them

With reverence.

These missionaries were not the strong winds

That blew through the colonial lands

To carry feathers to home grounds,

But seeds that had fallen deep in this foreign land

Buried but still living,

And have grown to be a shadow of history.


Youth with guitars and drum sticks in hands

Enter into the same old church,

For a time of Praise 'n' Worship,

And the evening is filled

With songs of thanksgiving.


A group of grown-ups

Come out of a two-storied mansion.

But they claim to be returning from

A Cottage prayer meeting.

The church is witnessing growth,

But remembers its forgotten past.


The thankfulness of the learned and informed society,

Has erected a memorial stone

Where those sacrificial feet first stepped in,

After a long voyage of personal loss

To share light, love and life.


Let the name of Christ Jesus

And His promised love,

Be shared in leaps and bounds

Over the wide drylands of sacrifices

And over the seashores of witnesses

Through every oasis of fresh springs

And gardens of pregnant vegetation.


Every wall that has Christ as its foundation,

Every tower for which Christ is the pillar,

Be blessed and continue to be a blessing.


His story of two centuries,

Will continue as history in this blessed land.


 
 
 

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© Ebenezer B. Veerasingam

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