START with his right hand!” the Roman officer must have jeered to the soldier carrying nails to be driven through the hands and feet of Jesus, on a Good Friday two thousand years ago.
And as the horrible sound of the nail, tearing flesh, rent the air, as the anguished moan of a man already half-dead was heard, there must have been heartbreaking cries, as loved ones held each other in horror.
Today that same sound of the nail, resonates through twenty centuries, as Christians in the country are petrified. Petrified that though they form just a miniscule minority of the population, yet forces of anger and hate have been unleashed against them, in schools, hospitals, churches and even homes, against priests, doctors and followers of the faith.
That sound of the nail tearing flesh echoes in our country, and sadly those present-day nails are piercing the hands that do the same work Christ did two millenniums ago.
Even as those same hands healed those who could not see, even as that same nail-pierced hand touched the eyes of the blind and helped them see, so also Christian hospitals which reach out to the poor and needy feel the same nail surfacing, in the form of assaults and attacks!
The nail hasn’t stopped doing its dastardly piercing! Schools and institutions, which have educated millions in the country, and because of which people the world over admire the command Indians have over language and expression, now stare with horror as mobs run through their gates, to frighten students, ransack rooms, and burn down buildings!
The nail hasn’t stopped piercing! “Start with his right hand!” the Roman officer must have jeered on that first Good Friday, but little did he know that that formidable nail, frightful in its appearance, cruel in its piercing, and thorough in its killing, would never be able to keep the Man inside his tomb.
That with every nail that was hammered, a billion followers would spring up. That the same Roman Empire he belonged to, would one day under Constantine, belong in faith to the very man whose hand the nail was being driven straight through!
The church that is burnt today is just a building. The life that is taken is that of one who will anyway die. But that which cannot be burnt, that cannot be pulled down, that cannot be killed is the Faith that that Man on the Cross two thousand years ago, brought from a God above to a needy world below.
So, hammer that nail with vengeance, but let this be known to you that hammer, and ye that command the hammering, that with every stroke of the hammer, an Almighty God will unleash a power that will soon create His kingdom here on earth! Even as the sound of the nail petrifies, rejoice, at the future that is going to be..!
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