A Missionary with Lantern
- 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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