Paulson Post

Jesus once told the parable of the treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44). A man who knew there was treasure hidden in a field sold all that he has and bought that field. He paid a price that is much higher than the actual price of the field. For the owner of the field and others this man appeared to be a fool. Though the owner of the field was selling the field, this man was in fact buying the treasure. The owner could see only the field but the buyer sees a treasure in it. This parable applies to all who have sacrificed all that they have for the sake of the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to establish. The best illustration of this parable is what happened in Jericho during the visit of Jesus when he met Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). The Bible ...

I had an aisle seat; so I was waiting for the other two passengers in my row before I buckle up and have a nap. I haven’t slept the whole night thanks for this red-eye flight. A young man and his wife walks towards my row; it seems they are going to be my co-passengers for the three hour flight in economy class. He was about 27 with a thin but medium long moustache and a cap that betrayed his religious identity. His religious identity was clear from the way he and his wife dressed. His wife wore a long black robe. Only her eyes were visible through a slit on that black gown.  I looked away as I made way for them to get to their seats. The young man let his wife go to her window seat and then turned to me. "Uncle, how are you!” the young man asked me in a very friendly tone. That woke me up and I made an eye contact with him; his friendly smile conquered me. I wanted to sleep, but he won’t let me. He kept talking always punctuating it with this respectful "uncle.” I mana...

Yesterday was a great day in my life! I had a big problem to sort out; but it was great opportunity to learn something directly from God. The church I pastor had been worshiping in a hotel room for the last three years. After a wonderful service last Sunday, as I walked out of the "church”, the manager of the hotel called me aside to say that we have to move out. That means I will have to find a new place for next Sunday. So, I started the hunt for places. Called up real-estate agents, sent text-messages to church members to pray and called leaders together to pray. I started with a Parsi lady who runs a small nursery school from her mother’s cottage. Though she gave me an appointment at 5:00 pm I could not keep it since I was with a property dealer who was showing me places around. She waited for me till 6.00pm and got on with her other evening engagements. However, when I called her up again to reschedule my appointment, she was extremely kind to discuss the matter over t...

She must be in her high teens or touching the twenties. A cute, lean, blonde she is. However, her face was without expressions, she seldom smiled and hardly talked. Her movements were robot-like. She stood behind the restaurant counter painted in black. The dominant theme of the restaurant was black. Black counter, black table-cloths, the pillars which held the glass panels giving us a view of outside were also painted black. She, like all the other waiters wore long black trousers, black shirts with long-sleeves. All that was visible from that black drape was her white expression-like face, dead tired eyes and her short blonde hair. In short, she and her team in that blackish restaurant intensified its melancholic air. My team ate three meals there for five days. We were there in that country which was part of former USSR. Tired after long meeting, we wallked in to the restaurant to be refreshed, but the melancholic air of the restaurant made us more tired and sick even though the foo...

The Indian Christian Cemetery in Pune is "alive” these days, especially the left side of the cemetery that is Catholic. Pune has two big cemeteries on the Solapur Road. The one of the left side is the European Cemetery. That is where the European Christians who lived in Pune during the colonial times are buried. After Independence, Indians who go to some of the mainline churches of European heritage are buried there. As the number of these churches are dwindling, the cemetery is also less frequented. A visit to these churches on Sundays and may make you think that there are more members in the cemetery than in the pews now. The growing younger churches manage the cemetery on the right side of the Solapur highway. That was designated for the Indian Christian population in colonial times and thus got its name as "Indian Christian Cemetery." That is divided as the Catholic and the non-Catholic cemeteries by the unpaved pathway in the middle. If you are Catholic turn left a...

Steve Jobs, as Rick Warren rightly tweeted was " the Thomas Edison" of his generation. Steve Jobs changed the way we look at the world just as Edison. Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ friend and colleague from the very beginning of his career remarked in his "tearful” interview with Associated Press that, "We lost something that we will never get back!" Steve Jobs was so unique! Everyone shared that sense of loss but will still remember Steve Jobs for the way he changed the world. Like thousands of others, Apple computers made my life different. The first work I ever did on a computer was on an old IBM PC way back in 1986-1988 during my student days in Bangalore. It had no hard disk, it used two 5" floppy disk drives. One of the floppy disks had the OS and the word processing program. The other was for saving the documents to. The computer had no memory of any sort, we had to enter the time and date at start up. We did not know what we were going to get. I mean, th...

The Bible teaches us that love is a fruit of the Spirit and it has supremacy over the gifts of the Spirit. In fact Saint Paul argues that the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit is useless if devoid of love. Being devoid of love is a state of existence which can be very well described as "being nothing” (1 Cor 13:2) and such lives "gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3). The love mentioned in this passage is a entirely different type of love, very different from what we usually mean by it. The Greek word AGAPE is consistently used throughout the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest poem on love. It was a common word for love which found a new meaning in the New Testament because of the experience of love that the writers had. Their experience was different from those who lived before their era, before Christ came in to this world to put up a magnifcient show of this special love. The translators of the Old Testament into Greek who lived about 200 years before Christ had ma...