Ravi's "Walking From East to West" - Ch.1

"Here in my homeland I am most free to be me...I get to do what I love best --simply to be with people."

(Ravi Zacharias, Walking From East to West, p.20)

I've read this book twice and am now going through it a third time to share gems I garnered. This is a story that resonated with me even though the childhood environ was different, the culture was quite similar. My heart often yearns for the country of my childhood. The character differs from me in that Ravi Zacharias is brilliant and famous and I am not.

Like Ravi, I accept that I am very much philosophical at heart with the tendency to view life's happenings through the light of eternity. I remember doing that personality test, the INFJ etc. and the presenter made an illustration to show the difference between the feeler and thinker using the room and its contents. One of the people chosen saw the details, the furniture and how things were placed and what it needed practically. The other saw the aura, the lack of 'warmth', that flowers were needed etc. I realized I did not fall into any of the categories described. I just thought the exercise "What do you see when you walk into this room?" was futile in the light of eternity. What on earth did it matter to people who were dying physically, emotionally and spiritually? Useless and purposeless for me. I always look for the eternal purpose in all that I do. Ravi began his search for purpose early on and could not find it for the first 17 years of his life.

The first chapter "A Life Out Of Nothing" basically outlines his childhood environs and gives genuine glimpses of India like this humorous one: "...An Indian friend of mine says that whenever he's asked if India has a Disney World, he answers, "No, we just take a taxi ride. That is breathtaking enough." He talks about the similarities between the biblical culture and the Indian culture, the stark simplicity of his early life with 12 relatives squeezing into a tiny house where noone thinks of complaining, because "this was life."

He describes the extreme polarities of India. On the one hand, it has produced some of the world's finest in medicine, philosophy, mathematics and IT. Then there is the picture that the world is familiar with, the dire poverty and teeming masses for whom rising socially is impossible. That is perhaps the main reason that India is the largest producer of movies in the world, with many 'rags to riches' stories. Ravi calls it the 'best barometer of humanity's gnawing need for an escape hatch". But it is on these streets that Ravi sees the true resilience of the human spirit. Isn't it true though of God's image stamped on all of us? I think of 9/11, war ravaged countries, flood victims etc. and I think of how people have 'gone on', so to speak.

His first glimpses of religion brought him fear and fascination and he observes that "many religions of the world are concocted to hold fear and control over people." He attended all kinds of religious festivals. He got his first taste of "western religion" with visits from the Jehovah Witnesses and even at an early age quickly questioned the "144,000 making it to paradise". When they stopped coming to their house, Ravi dismissed what he thought was Christianity. His mother revealed a spirituality mixed with superstition when his sister, Sham, was healed of polio. His mother thought it was because she gave to the shrine of St. Philomena and continued to do so for many years. Later on though, when his brother Ramesh got sick, his father called a Pentecostal minister to pray for him and he was healed.

He ends this chapter with a distinct Indian illustration to show how God would use his spartan beginnings, his life out of nothing, as some of the threads being pulled together to form a beautiful tapestry. It is a picture illustration taken from Varanasi in the north of India where wedding saris are handwoven into magnificent patterns in gold, silver, reds, blues:

..."made by just two people - a father sits on a platform and a son who sits two steps down from him. The father has all the spools of silk threads around him. As he begins to pull the threads together, he nods, and the son responds by moving the shuttle from one side to the other. Then the process begins again, with the dad nodding and the son responding...its a long and tedious process to watch. But if you come back in two ot three weeks, you'll see a magnificent pattern emerging..."

Ravi concludes, "we may be moving the shuttle, but the design is in the mind of the father. The son has no idea what pattern is emerging. He just responds to the Father's nod.

Friend, if you are like me, we many times shake our heads instead of nodding, simply because we cannot see the Divine design. Many times the process seems to go on forever and the tedium becomes oh so raw and painful. But if we persevere and continue to look for the Father's nod, a natural rhythm will eventually happen. It is when we will have learnt this simple task of nodding to His nod, with its simple trust, simple obedience.