Finding Inspiration
[Adventures in Faith: India; 1991] If you’ve read my Adventures in Faith, you might imagine I’m a person of action. But I’m not.
Many people are all about the doing of things. Their spiritual life often consists of doing wonderful things.
They tend poor people. They give drink to the thirsty. They put their faith into practice.
However, I’m not naturally like that. Instead, I’m a thinker.
I think about things. I’m not naturally a person of action. For me to actually go do something, it takes a lot of motivation and inspiration.
In India, I didn’t have much spare time to think.
But whatever spare time I had, I invested most of it keeping myself motivated.
I read books. I read them a lot.
Of course, I read the Bible. I read it a lot. But there were a few other things I was reading in those days.
One person I read was my hero, Mohandas K. Gandhi. You might remember him by his more popular nickname, “Mahatma” Gandhi.
While I lived in Gandhi’s native India, I read two of his books.
The first book I read by Gandhi was his autobiography. It is called The Story of My Experiments With Truth.
When Gandhi says “experiments with truth,” what he means is “acting upon truth.” His whole life was a great experiment of acting upon truth itself.
Gandhi was a consummate seeker of truth, especially spiritual truth.
Although the whole book was very energizing for me, these things stood out the most to me:
- Gandhi’s spiritual seeking
- Gandhi’s dietary experiments
- Gandhi’s radical solidarity with poor people
- Gandhi’s inventing of the nonviolent resistance to evil
The second book I read by Gandhi was his own translation of the famous Hindu Scripture text, “The Bhagavad Gita.”
Gandhi’s translation is called The Gita According to Gandhi.
In those days, I was told that if you compared the Gita to the rest of the Hindu Scriptures, it would be like comparing the four Christian gospels to the rest of the Bible.
And reading Gandhi’s own translation was a little bit like reading, let’s say, Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, along with his own personal commentary.
The Gita is about Krishna. Krishna is the charioteer for Prince Arjuna. Just before an epic battle is to begin, they have a conversation. That conversation is the essence of the Gita.
Krishna is described as an incarnation of God. In artwork, he’s depicted as having blue skin. In some artwork, he’s portrayed as playing a flute and dancing.
Another book I read, for inspiration, was the Dominique Lapierre novel called The City of Joy.
It tells the story of a Catholic priest named Stephan Kovalski. He goes to live among the poorest of the poor, in a Calcutta slum called Anand Nagar.
That Hindi name means “The City of Joy.”
The priest takes up their way of living and their diet.
Eventually, living as one of them, he’s able to transmit the beauty of his faith in Christ.
It spoke to me about the experiments Tom and I did as missionaries back in Kamagasaki.
We simply tried to live as one of the homeless people, at least to the extent we could. We tried to befriend them and love them.
From that context, we shared our faith.
So I kept a stream of inspiring things flowing into my heart and mind, mainly by reading.
Another place I found inspiration was by observing religious things.
In my own life, I’m in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a given. That love is there all the time. I can neither increase it nor make it go away.
It seems to be a permanent gift of God. I rejoice in it all the time.
From this God-given strength, I have a sturdy vantage point. By God’s grace, I can look around, without falling away. So when I was in India, I looked into Hindu things.
Looking into Hinduism did not erode my devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather, examining Hinduism increased my love for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so I watched all things Hindu. I saw their roadside shrines. I watched their parades. I listened to my neighbors on their rooftop, as they chanted their early-morning prayers.
RESOURCES
Mohandas K. Gandhi (at Wikipedia)
The Story of My Experiments With Truth (at Wikipedia)
The Gita according to Gandhi (at MKGandi.org)
The City of Joy (at Wikipedia)
Dominique Lapierre (at Wikipedia)
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bibleand the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.