Empty Hand Revolution

A Father's Warning

“God has told me, son, in no uncertain terms.” Cosmo’s father leaned forward. Resting his elbows on the table, he held his teacup in front of his face and blew across it. “He will not use the Revolutionary Party to bring freedom to our people. If you join them, you will be throwing away the talents God has trusted in you.”

“What about Aring?” Cosmo stared at the table.

“I have given my oldest son the same warning.” Cosmo’s father squeezed his wife’s hand as the two of them exchanged a grieved look. “He has chosen not to heed it.”

Cosmo shook his head. “And Muivah? It’s said he’s a godly man. Why wouldn’t God share the same words with him?”

Cosmo’s father nodded. “Indeed, I believe Muivah to be a godly as well as a goodly man. I don’t know, son, God may have a role for him yet.”

“Have you heard our cousin’s stories?” Cosmo asked.

“Yes.” His father sipped his tea. “I’m assuming you mean the story of Muivah surviving the hail of gunfire from half a dozen helicopters—how the bullets could not harm him.” He sipped again. “I have no reason to doubt it’s truth. But even King Saul was God’s anointed.”

Cosmo looked into his father’s eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Have you still not studied the whole of King David’s story?” He rested his tea on the table. “Bah. Too much science and too little Scripture. Saul was king of the Hebrews before David, before there was a kingdom to be king over. He was a mighty man, a man of action, the people’s king. But David—he answered to God. You remember the story of Goliath?”

Cosmo nodded. He had in fact reread the story recently.

His father closed his eyes and winced, as if reliving an old injury. “Your oldest brother believes humility to be synonymous with weakness, therefore he misunderstands the critical truth in the Goliath story. He sees it as a story of courage and pride in the face of daunting challenge.”

“Is he wrong?” Cosmo wouldn’t have simplified in the same manner, but he couldn’t see any clear fault in the summary.

“Perhaps not wrong, but wrongly focused.” His father grinned as he picked up his tea and gulped it. Cosmo’s father warmed to his subject, even while his tea cooled. He enjoyed the fact there was still a thing or two he could teach the scholar in the family.

“David defeated Goliath because he relied on God’s might rather than his own. The boy, David, displayed a personal humility in conjunction with a divine pride. It is a rare leader who understands the balance. You see, humility can open us up to a power infinitely greater than our own.”

His father’s teaching sparked a question Cosmo hadn’t been able to resolve during his study of the passage. “And when David refused Saul’s personal armor—”

“He refused traditional military wisdom, choosing instead the weapon of a shepherd.”

“The shepherd king.” Cosmo finished his father’s thought as the answer to his question clicked in his brain. “So it was not a military solution to the problem at all, but a spiritual one.”

“Repentance before revolution.” His father nodded. “Our people will find deliverance only if they look to the Lord to deliver them. But they are like sheep without a shepherd.”

Cosmo sensed the wisdom of his father’s words. As excited as he’d been in the jungle when speaking with the delegates of the Revolutionary Party, an even deeper resonance churned inside him as his father spoke of the power unleashed by humility. “With prideful hearts, the Naga cannot defeat the Indians.” Cosmo tested the validity of the idea by speaking it aloud.

“Mahatma Gandhi understood the teaching as well as anyone, even if he did not understand the source. You cannot seize humility. You cannot boast of its conquest. And you cannot obtain true humility while grasping any form of worldly success. It must be received with empty hands.”

Cosmo shivered. There it was again. Something vague and hungry tugged at the back of his awareness. It passed before he could identify it. To focus himself he repeated his father’s words from earlier. “Repentance before revolution.”

His father nodded. “When we confront India with personal humility and divine pride, God will deliver us on that day, even if our deliverance comes, as it did for Gandhi, at great personal cost.”