It was at a crematorium, as the body was being prepared to be lit, that a friend leaned across to where I stood and asked, “You know I read your columns, don’t you feel frustrated fighting for causes that seem lost?”

I watched the son going round the body of his mother, and I turned to the one who had asked the question and said, “I do grow weary fighting! But as a journalist that’s my job!”

As I was immersed in that strange conversation around the funeral pyre I remembered the Biblical Jacob. How, when Jacob, old and quite sick accompanied his sons to Egypt to shift his residence to where his son Joseph ruled, he was introduced to Pharaoh by his son, “⁸ And Pharaoh asked Jacob, ^[ “How old are you?” ⁹ Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. Few and unpleasant have been the years of my life, and they have not reached the years that my fathers lived during the days of their pilgrimage.” ¹⁰ And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and departed from his presence.

What an answer, and none else but a man who was weary of battle could have thus expressed himself. If you read Jacob’s life it was hardly uneventful. He fled from his brother Esau, after taking his blessing and birthright. He fought and worked hard for Rachel, though initially his father-in- law gave him Leah. He ran away from his father-in-law later, and then even wrestled with an angel of God, from nightfall till the break of day, till the angel left him with a disjointed hip.

But he was God’s anointed! And his name was used whenever God wanted to tell people who He was, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!” are verses scattered throughout the Holy Book.

But finally when he met the Pharaoh, it was like an old man telling a stranger, and I have heard many such strange conversations between strangers in local trains, when someone says, “I am tired! I give up!”

But was that sentence followed by an act of helplessness, like weeping on Pharaoh’s shoulder or sobbing like an old weary man?

No!

He then blessed Pharaoh. And that blessing was a blessing that he took from God and placed on his new friend the king of Egypt. Which showed that he might have been physically weary, but was spiritually strong.

God rewarded him, with a son who not only ruled Egypt, but had rescued them from famine, and was part of the genealogical line that begat the Messiah!

Are you weary of fighting God’s causes? Injustice? Against fraudsters? Bullies? With hypocrites who use their position in the religious circle and outside for selfish purposes?

It was a strange place to have had such a conversation, but as I watched the last rites, I knew that a God above would have welcomed Jacob to Heaven saying, “You have fought the good fight, you have finished the race, you have kept the faith. Now there is in store for you the crown of righteousness.”

Worth being a fighter, right?

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