SING the solo Bob! the choir conductor told me. “No,” I said. “But it’s your old church!” “That’s why I don’t want to sing a solo!” I whisper “I just want to sit in the choir pew I sat in many decades ago, and thank God, for being the God of my dreams!” “God of your dreams?”
“Yes,” I whisper and see him, a little fifteen-year old, small and insecure, shy and sensitive, sitting at the back of the choir. “Does he sing?” I hear the choir conductor ask and the whole choir laughs as I go red in the face. And as the rehearsals start and the music flows, I dreamed: I dreamt of success, that would not have the wolf knocking at our door. Of cars and houses that would belong to me and not to landlords who we changed faster than I changed my socks.
And the God of my dreams smiled at me, in that last row in the choir. “And Lord I want to a writer!” And the Lord above nodded His head at a little boy with his fancy dreams. “No solo!” I say again, “What I want is to sit in that same row behind. What I’d like to do is to look up and smile at Him who heard me those days so long ago, “Thank you Lord!” I whisper.
“Did you feel my presence Bob?” “Everyday Lord, every moment as you helped those dreams come true and then I asked again, I want to be a writer Lord!” “Write Bob!” said His voice from above. “But Lord I have creditors to pay off, dealers wanting their payment!” “Write Bob, write! The rest is my problem!”
And I wrote, and the God of my dreams looked after creditors, dealers, bank loans, credit card payments. He took charge of the column, brought in newspapers and magazines outside India and newspapers all over India. “Lord!” I pray as I sit in that choir pew in the last row, “You took a stammering Moses and made him your own, you take weak men and make them strong, thank you for taking a shy, small, insecure me and making my dreams come true!”
We all have a childhood church or maybe a classroom in a school, where we dreamt big dreams, and prayed to a God above. Some place we can go back and thank Him. I went back that day to that choir pew, and instead of singing a solo for the conductor, sang one of thanks to the Conductor in the Skies above who had raised His baton and made my dreams come true. My joyous heart sang a silent thank you to Him, as the choir sang around me that day..!
