It was during the seminary mid-term break and I decided to stay in the parish of St. Philip in Segamat, Johor. There were four of us staying in the parish, two priests, a deacon and myself. It happened that one weekday, there was to be a penitential service for the ‘Orang Asli’ community, or better known as ‘Orang Asal’ in their Kampung. So the four of us prepared to make our way to their Kampung, which is situated somewhere in a Palm plantation.
As we were coming out of the parish it started to drizzling and five minutes into our journey it began to rain ‘cats and dogs’. We could not postpone the service and had no choice but to make our way there somehow. I was seated at the back seat of the ‘Kembara’ (a Malaysian car) the priest was driving. While we were chatting in the car, I was observing the car wipers moving up and down the screen of the car, clearing the rain water so that the driver may be able to see the road more clearly.
At that particular time it occurred to me. What would happen if these car wipers were to stop functioning suddenly? Can we continue the journey without these wipers working, especially right now, when it is raining ‘cats and dogs’? We will have to stop driving and wait for the rain to stop or else we will be endangering not only our lives but also the lives of others.
It is the same with our lives my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. The ‘car’ symbolizes ourselves and the ‘rain’ (also thunder and lightning) symbolizes the temptations, sins and all the bad influences of this world. The car ‘wipers’ symbolizes our spiritual lives and our relationship with Jesus. If we have not establish a strong relationship with Jesus, it will be just like a car whose wipers are not functioning. Somehow our journey will become harder, more difficult and more dangerous, just because Jesus is not in our lives.
Psalm 116, reminds us to “walk in the presence of the Lord”.With the Lord in our lives only then will we be able to resist all the temptations, sins and bad influences of this world. Even if we have to go through hardships, difficulties or sufferings, they will be meaningful because Jesus is strong in our lives.
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Stay tuned for the next post by Bro Lionel Itheraj on 03rd Oct 2009.
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