Barack Obama Wins
Barack Obama was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. They didn't have much money, but they taught him values from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. He took out loans to put himself through school. After college, he worked for Christian churches in Chicago, helping communities devastated when steel plants closed. Obama turned down lucrative job offers after law school to return to Chicago, leading a successful voter registration drive. He joined a small law firm, taught constitutional law and, guided by his Christian faith, stayed active in his community. Obama and his wife Michelle are proud…
September and October (2008) financial crisis in US had contagious effect on the whole world. Stock market downfall, liquid cash disappearance, foreign exchange rates becoming unstable, anxiety and fear in investors, some suicides were reported from several parts of the world. Is it the sign of global recession? Pink is the colour that is considered scary, as people are rapidly loosing their jobs . . . the global society needs to be in ICU for spiritual shock treatment and surgery. Alas, prophets try to apply band aids as solutions and declare all will be well. Will the Church produce prophets for the post-modern era? Yes, God will raise his own witnesses for every generation.
Chinappa Moses David! He wasn’t popular. He wasn’t polished in education. He wasn’t prosperous. His work wasn’t professional. He wasn’t even a preacher. He didn’t possess any fascinating expertise according to the standards of the world. On the contrary, he was born to a poor family on October 24, 1940. He lost his father when he was a child. Life wasn’t easy for him. He was brought up under rugged circumstances. He was unloved, abused and neglected. He worked as an ordinary bus driver till the last day of his existence on earth. So what makes me to write about this person? Why should you read about this man?
My conversion was not a change of religion; it was a change of heart. I was born a Brahmin and am the grandson of a priest whom I dearly loved. I am educated and my current professional standing indicates that I am reasonably intelligent. I am also affluent and my income would put me distinctly in the upper middle class bracket. I guess that would make me high-caste, rich and smart. In other words, I am not a tribal, or poor or dim-witted. And yet, I chose to become a follower of Jesus Christ. The world would call me a convert to Christianity. I have no problems with that, though I see my faith more as a relationship with God through Jesus Christ than as a religion. And for the record, I can truthfully claim that no one financially induced or threatened or deceived me into converting to Christianity.
Who am I? I belong to the Surinamese Indian community that came to Suriname, South America, 135 year ago. I consider myself of Hindustani origin, the third generation Indian Christians, born in the Netherlands in the early sixties of the last century. My father came to the Netherlands from Suriname to study by that time. My own history started 96 years ago when my “aja/ dada”, my paternal grand father - came as a three years old boy with his mother, Nani (my maternal grandmother) and elder brother in 1912 from “United Provinces”, later known as “Uttar Pradesh” India with a ship named Ganges IV to Suriname. They departed from Calcutta on February 27th 1912 and arrived in Suriname on the 7th April 1912. He was the son of one of the free immigrants. My grandfather, a Hindu, settled down on the West Coast of Suriname, in a town called Nickerie, where he married a girl from a family who was partly Hindu, partly Muslim.