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There’s something about my life that continuously reminds me of the breaking of bread. It’s a wonderful image in my head; Jesus moved with compassion for the multitudes, blessed 2 fish and 5 loaves and then broke bread to feed the people. Jesus fervent with desire to institute the last supper with His disciples compared His body to the breaking of bread.


 
Something divine always happens when bread is broken in the hands of Jesus.

I feel like the Lord holds me gently in His hands, speaks blessings over me and then with a ferocious grip presses into my very being and pulls me apart breaking me and reminding me that brokenness is what He ultimately desires in my life.

Broken hearted I gathered up the fragmented love God gave me for India. As I packed up, I also tucked away memories in my bosom of all the people in Andhra-Pradesh who put their fragrant and oily fingerprints on the fabric of my soul. I raise prayers like incense for India before the High Priest in my waking thoughts and I dream of them when I sleep.

Tears did not come. Instead, the warmth of India’s promise for my future lingered like the fragrant embrace of a newfound lover – assuring me that they’d faithfully wait for my return.

By bus and by train, the further I moved away from Ongole, the more I compared its rustic beauty and village life to the unfolding city scape and monochromatic modernity that paled in the light of what had blossomed in the month of February back there. I saw the color fading before my eyes and give way to a vapid scene of jeans and t-shirts and highways with lanes, skyscrapers and multi-level malls.

I searched in vain for goats to suddenly appear on the side of the road or for the cardamom colored people of Andhra-Pradesh with thick oil-slicked hair neatly groomed bustling along with long limbs and piercing eyes.

 
From Hyderabad to Agra by train, my body couldn’t withstand the toll. I broke and fell to pieces through torrent waves of diarrhea and vomiting. Cold sweat adhesion pinned me to the vinyl sleeper bunk in my train cabin. For 30 hours, the withdrawal I felt from Ongole violently seeped out through my pores and covered me in hives. The train just kept speeding forward, jostling me with waves of nausea.

As if lovesick, food would not stay inside of me. I was being torn away from Ongole by a locomotive beast who’d attempted to swallow me up, but instead I stayed lodged in the jagged fangs of its massive jaw. I felt my insides snapping and then being squeezed before I’d explode. Shaken and slathered in filth, I would never renounce my love for India. Even then, I would not cry.

India as I had known her in Ongole could not be blamed. I held her innocent and free from the guilt of sending me off indignant and disease ridden. This is the love God have given to me for Ongole’s sake to His glory.

And when I had finally arrived to Agra, as sick as I was, I was swept up with the crowd to see the Taj Mahal. I saw it – and still its beauty did not impress me.  What some madman had imagined and commissioned humans to make could not compare to the glory of God building up His church in Andhra-Pradesh. The north of India was not brown enough for me. The people here were not colored like dark, earthy spices nor did they smolder with Gospel fire.

Sitting on the marble cross-legged with my back to the mausoleum, I overlooked the river in my misery and smiled at God.
I thanked God that like the bread, I was being broken.

Break me, Lord Jesus, and let the multitudes be fed. Amen.