Light of Life - Remembering the Associations

I came across Light of Life for the first time in the early 1980s, when I was a student in the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. I was a new Christian from another faith background and hungry for Christian literature. There used to be a Christian bookshop in Pune that I used to frequent. They had a good collection of books, but they were expensive. Light of Life, then priced at Rs.1 or 2 was affordable and had good spiritually uplifting content. I cannot remember who the editor was then but subsequently Benny and Susan Joseph were appointed as the editors and made their home in Pune. For quite a while, till I finished my studies and left Pune, their home was one I often visited. They were good friends.

My active association with Light of Life began after Mr. P.Abraham took over as the editor. Some time in the mid nineties, a small article that I had written for Interface – the newsletter of the UESI in Delhi which my wife edited for a while was appreciated. I expanded on the theme a bit, asked a friend to type it out and then sent it by post to Light of Life. These were days before e mail became common and even computers were not that common.

After about six months ,when I had come to think that the piece was really no good , the article suddenly got published which encouraged me to write some more. More importantly the exercise of writing for Light of Life forced me to learn to do my own typing as my friends had their own work and the tedious task of proof reading what others typed out for me was also a tedious exercise.

I am grateful to Light of Life and its editorial team for allowing me to glimpse in a small way what the influence of the media can be. In many remote parts of the country, where people have never met me but have read the articles that the magazine publishes, people think that I am a full time writer or some thing which is flattering to me!

Light of Life has helped me to enlarge my writing vision. Mr. Abraham’s editorials in the magazine are not dull sermons and he and others like Rev. Kuruvilla Chandy write and say things that force you to think for yourselves and not blandly accept what has been handed down to us. Through their writings, I myself have been challenged to look at the world and what is happening in it through “heaven’s eyes” and write and interpret events in that light and having done that share them with not just Christian readers but also others.

As Light of Life celebrates its golden jubilee, one of the biggest things we need to thank God for is for its editorial team which has kept its content relevant and meaningful and not allowed it to get branded as a staid devotional magazine. The Christian media in India is small but in that small world, Light of Life is big.