Vignette #003: Thank Yous

 

Vignette #003: Thank Yous

I am a villain when it comes to acknowledging that others have helped me get to where I am now in my life. I don’t like to say ‘thank you’. 

This is probably because I hate to admit that I’ve taken the help of others. I like to think I am self-sufficient. I’d rather, not take help and suffer than ask for help and live. Yep, that’s me. Proud and distant.

As the last post to mark the end of the year, I want to thank all the people who helped me through life in 2020. I am grateful, though I might not tell you that to your face.

I want to begin with a ‘Thank You’ to my sister. I could have never made it out of that hell-hole without your patience. I want to thank you for helping me to apply for jobs and start my blog. You got your PhD this year, so that’s quite an achievement, which isn’t new for you. But I thank God He put you as my sister instead of anyone else.

The second and third person I want to thank is my mom and grandmother. God used both of them to communicate with me, so I know that God speaks to them. However, when I found that out, I wondered whose voice I was listening to all these years. And that thought makes me cry.

Then I’d like to say thank you to Mrs Joyce Devadas, Mrs Christine Gnanaseelan and her husband, Mrs Salome Singh and her two daughters. The reason I am grateful to them, though, I won’t share. That’s for another day. Also, a big thank you to my readers.  

Apart from these persons, I want to thank everyone at my workplace. I never thought working would be so much fun and exciting until I stepped into Das Writing Services. Every month the office has something exciting planned, so I look forward to working all the time. I have my lazy days, but they are just a few and far between thanks to the amazing ambience at work.

And finally, I am grateful to God. 

Why? 

Some people love the life they live on Earth. They love their family, friends, work, and generally, life. But there was a time when I didn’t want to live. Now that I’ve understood that life can be fun, I sometimes wonder why I went through a phase where I did not want to live. Well, I want to thank God for not taking that phase of my life seriously and giving me a second chance.

Thank You and Happy New Year!

 

Vignette #002: Quality Consciousness

  Quality Consciousness

I have a small confession to make. I am usually not a very quality oriented person at the workplace or at home.

When I write at work, I do so very haphazardly. I neither take the interest nor the time to do my work well. My chief aim is to reach the day’s target rather than deliver quality work. Now that I think about it I don’t patiently craft each sentence. I don’t ponder over what words to write. For professional and timely writing there is another set of rules I adhere to. I focus more on speed, clarity and functionality. This brings me to talk about the quality of the work we turn in at work.

There is this proverb in the book of Proverbs that pricks my mind. It goes like this in the Good News Translation: “Show me someone who does a good job, and I will show you someone who is better than most and worthy of the company of kings.”

I’ll share a story about a friend of mine. For two weeks, my friend’s cook didn’t turn up, and she was forced to do the cooking. She took so much trouble over making the dishes that I was surprised at the amount of attention to detail she put in. When I cook, I again focus on completing the job on time, rather than serving up a lip-smacking dish. Not my friend. She diced when the recipe said to dice, chopped finely when it said to chop finely, poured hot water when it said to pour hot water. She followed every recipe to the T. If the recipe called for four bay leaves she used exactly four bay leaves, nothing more, nothing less! What a perfectionist!

I always approximate or take shortcuts when following a recipe.

Some months later, this same friend attended Breakthrough 2019 which is a program at the Assemblies of God Church Park Street. The Tamil Pastor’s wife prophesied over her saying that she was a person who did her work with all her heart and that was a sweet fragrance to God.

I was very, very surprised to know that God notices such small aspects of our life. From then on I began to wonder why I never took the same interest in my work. Whenever I do anything I never aim for excellence. I’m satisfied with the bare minimal. Then I read this verse and it got me thinking.

I think the best way to test the quality of your work, is to let your heart be the judge. Or your conscience.

But in the workplace and at home, no matter what task we are assigned, quality matters, and so does diligence.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Vignette #001: The Galilean Drunkard

 The Galilean Drunkard

I write a wine blog for work. Usually, it goes something like this: “The Sauvignon Cabernet is a classy, carmine libation, destined to tantalize your taste buds and stay in your memory long after you’ve finished a glass.” I use a ton of sensory words like ‘boozy’, ‘revelation’, ‘silky’, and ‘mellow’, and frankly, I am sort of sick of it. So I thought for the month of December, given Christmas is around the corner, I’d write something different.

A while back, I had wanted to write about wine and literature. I wanted to talk about the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and somehow marry the themes from the book to selling wine (since that’s what the blogs are written to do), or merge wine with music, wine and poems, anything but a direct sale.

Then for Christmas I decided I wanted to write about Jesus. I thought I would talk about how Jesus called himself the “true vine”.

But I knew I could not mention his name outright since that isn’t permitted, so I came up with a moniker for him: The Galilean Drunkard. The name comes from the Pharisees calling Jesus a glutton and drunkard.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t have the courage to float the idea, and knowing that it isn’t fair to sneakily promote my beliefs on somebody else’s blog, I thought why not write what I wanted, on my own blog?

This isn’t a story or a poem, it’s about Jesus calling himself the “True Vine” and why I feel let down by the Galilean Drunkard.

Welcome…

My text is from the Gospel of John, Chapter 15. and in particular the verse 16. The verse goes something like this: “You did not choose me, I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.”

There was a time when I believed God meant that verse for me. But now, I am not too sure.

I remember Reverend Nigel Pope preach this sermon one Christmas morning about the Vine into which all believers are grafted. The Vine is Jesus, God is the Gardener who does the grafting, and the fruit that we produce are the good deeds we do that show off our new faith.

Then comes the painful yet necessary part of pruning…

There were strange things going on in my life at that time, and I sort of believed God was pruning me to bear more fruit.

There was another episode where this verse came to help me. 

I was at my wit's end once and I turned to scripture to find solace, and I read these words from John’s gospel. “You did not choose me, I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.”

That Sunday I went with a friend to AG Church to seek help from a Pastor there. They were giving out awards to kids who had finished this course on the Bible or something, and the Pastor quoted John 15:16. I thought he was speaking to me.

My heart leapt.

If there ever is one thing I said, that I meant with all my heart, it was this: this time I’m going to follow Jesus.

I sometimes wonder why that wasn’t enough for the Galilean Drunkard…