Love Leaves No Knots: A Collection of Stories Read online

being mixed with rhythmic snores buzzing through the cells. In his locked corner, the youth sobbed with hushed tears. He groaned in between snivels in a language different than that spoken in this land:

  “Why is this happening to me?”

  “What have I done to deserve this injustice?”

  “Now, I’m hated by my family and also by the world for no wrong?”

  The world was fast asleep. He was talking to God. But, was God also listening? Or, was He as indifferent as the world around? Was He also compelled by circumstances and the violent wills of men? The past was too painful. The future looked bleak, uncertain, and dark.

  The youth kept weeping for a long time till it seemed all his tears had run dry. Then he stopped for a little while, and all of a sudden started weeping the more vehemently again. This time it seemed he was singing a song:

  “Forgive me Lord for doubting Your hand

  That holds the scepter over sky, water, and land;

  By one gesture, You have signaled it to be,

  That the luminaries of heavens bow down to me.

  And, yet not to me but to You who commands!

  What power can resist it, what mortal hand!”

  He moved his shackled hands and the chains clanked. A prisoner woke up in the opposite cell and fell to snoring again.

  “Darkness has covered me like a thick cloud,

  And I can’t see You anywhere around;

  But, should I ask for proof before I believe,

  Should I have the answer before its appointed time?

  Should I trust my sight and doubt Your might

  By which the day exists and also the night!

  Yes, also this night! Yes, also this night!”

  The youth fell asleep. Unseen by him, two luminous angels who stood guard over his cell talked to each other, ‘This young man knows our Master, and he knows that the Master cannot be doubted.” Just then two other angels appeared. “You are both summoned to the Master now; we’ll take over. The sun is soon to rise; has the boy found some rest?” they inquired.

  “Yes, he has found rest,” they smilingly answered and disappeared.

  ….

  Several years after this incident, the boy became the Prime Minister of that nation. The King gave him the name Zaphnath-Paaneah, which some believe means “the preserver of life”; others think that it means “the one to whom secrets are revealed.” But, we remember him as Joseph, the dreamer of dreams.

  JUDGE NOTHING BEFORE THE TIME

  (Fiction)

  “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes… Then each one’s praise will come from God.” (1 Corinthians 4:5)

  The Stadium was filled with cheers, applauses, and feverish excitement. The runners all took positions and geared up waiting for the signal shot. Gerald sensed the sublimity too. The seconds of time between the start and finish line of the 100 meter track was all the reality that meant everything to him. All of space-time was crammed therein for him now. He felt highly elated. After seven years of rigorous training, throughout which his formidable form had emerged as the unbeatable image to all, he was now on the test to prove to the world that it now had the giant of athletics it had long been waiting for.

  He had watched the other competitors and marked their dispositions. Some looked quite confident. He scoffed at them in his heart. In his heart he said to them, “This will be the day to break your pride, man!” There were one or two who looked rather fearful and apprehensive; they had taken one or two glances at Gerald and then quickly turned away from his piercing glances. “Cowards!” he spoke within himself again, “How did you even land up here?” He shook his head in disbelief. A skinny little chap was positioned next to him. Gerald chuckled to himself. “Lilliputs too!” he thought and shook his head again thinking “This is impossible! This race looks far from competitive at all!”

  The crowd admired the physique and lion-like features of Gerald. The old folks betted for him and the young girls watched him with admiration, smiles on their face, each feeling, as it seemed, that it was she and he alone there in the whole of the Stadium. The young boys posted his image on the walls of their brains as their model. The small kids, however, wished that they were the ones running all over the ground. The TV broadcasters were busy switching clips between the athletes, especially Gerald, and faces in the crowd.

  Just then the shot was fired and the runners plunged into the race. The cheers and applause got thicker. As expected, Gerald was way ahead of all others. At the very beginning, he had seen one boy, positioned a little ahead, lose balance and fall. It didn’t occur as strange to Gerald at all. In a few seconds, he had bulleted ahead of all others and was pounding the ground like a leopard in full heat. He knew that he was unbeatable. He was happy that he would win the prize. A few leaps more and he would break the finish line. Knowing that he was way ahead of all, he slowed his pace a little bit down. Just then, the skinny little boy overtook him like a bolt from the blue. Gerald was shocked and stunned; he staggered with confusion, a muscle twitched and in a second he was down with excruciating pain. Many in the crowd slumped on their seats with gasped breath. Some stood motionless watching, waiting for some miracle. The girls and the boys almost felt like weeping; but, the children laughed: they laughed, of course, because they thought it was a kind of clownish joke. But, there laid the great Gerald panting and watching. The little chap whom he had despised flashed off and ripped the finish line with his skinny chest; then, everyone else passed him by. The unbeatable was now down on the ground. Medical men ran up to him spraying and working at his ankle. He was lifted and taken away from the ground.

  Later, someone asked him what had happened wrong. He answered with sadness: “I forgot that I was just a runner, not the judge, and that I was not supposed to judge anything or anyone before I had touched the finish line. This race has reminded me that no one is unbeatable, anyone can fall and miss the line; therefore, do not judge anyone before the time.”

  ADONIRAM JUDSON: MISSIONARY TO BURMA

  (True Story)

  He hung, his ankles tied together and fastened to a pole several feet above the floor. The pain was excruciating, unimaginably. The prison smelt vermin infested “death”. By dawn he was so stiff and numb, he could barely walk. Though separated from her husband, his wife managed to smuggle in food to him by bribing the guards. These efforts were curtailed, however, within no great time. His location was to be changed. The journey was gruesome. He was terribly weak from the confinement, and the gravel road, sharp, hurt his barefoot. Some of the other prisoners with him died along the road. The pain was unbearable, but he continued on, vowing to live if only for Ann and the baby. Two years later, his wife would die. Ten years from now, he would present this land of his persecution, the Kingdom of Ava (the land of the Burmese), the greatest gift they could ever receive: the Bible in the Burmese language.

  A Skeptic turns to the Savior

  Adoniram Judson was born on the 9th of August, 1788, the son of a stern and humorless Congregationalist minister, in Malden, Massachusetts, USA. When sixteen, Adoniram left home and entered Brown University. Here he was greatly influenced by the Deistic beliefs of his friend Jacob Eames. On his return home, he announced to his shocked parents his rejection of Christianity and left for New York to take up a career as a playwright. But success in New York proved to be elusive. A reckless, vagabond life was what accompanied him throughout this time. Frustrated, he left New York one night silently and set out for his uncle’s home in Sheffield. Desiring to rest for the night, he stopped at an inn, and this, next door to a dying man. The agonizing cries and groans of this sick man wouldn’t allow him to sleep. A question arose in his heart: Is the man in the next room prepared for death? Then, was he himself? He was terrified. And he felt as one mocked at. What would his classmates at Brown say to these terrors of the night, who thought of him as bold in thought? What would Eames say – the clear-headed, intelligent, witty, skeptic Eames? He imagined Eames laugh and felt abashed
.

  When he awoke in the morning, the terrors were no more. He ran downstairs to the innkeeper and asked for the bill. Then, casually, he asked whether the young man in the next room was better. “He is dead,” was the answer. Judson inquired if he knew the man who he was. “Oh yes,” replied the innkeeper, “Young man from the College in Providence. Name was Eames, Jacob Eames.”

  Shocked, depressed, and weary Judson arrived home. He joined the Andover Theological Seminary. Here, after several months, he came to know the Lord by dedicating himself to him. This commitment was followed by a pledge to serve God as a missionary – America’s first such. After reading a copy of “An account of an Embassy to the kingdom of Ava,” Judson purposed to preach the Gospel to Burma. Finance was a problem, and so the American board sent him to the London Missionary Society to raise support there. On the way, his ship was captured by a French privateer. But God was with him and helped him to miraculously escape from the French prison bringing him safe to London. On his return to the States, it was decided that the new mission would be funded exclusively by Americans, rather than jointly with the LMS.

  To the Land of the Burmese

  On 19th February 1812, and so, Adoniram, his wife Ann (Nancy) together with another missionary couple – Samuel and Harriet Newell – sailed from Salem, Massachusetts on board the big Caravan;