When I was teaching school back in Malaysia, I live for a period in a small town called Raub, in the state of Pahang. My years there was blessed by an old Indian man. When I first met him he was in his 60's, and when I last saw him he was touching 80. His name was Abishegam but we fondly called him Uncle Abi. Uncle Abi was a man of great humility and faith. He was an elder of a brethren church in that small town I used to worship in. He was a man steeped in the Word of God whose prayerful and teaching ministry touched many young people.

In that frail age of his, he would still drive that old battered blue Peugeot. I remember one evening he came into church bleeding in the mouth. He had been ferrying some young people to church and in the dark, he had missed a turn and drove onto a lamppost, breaking a front tooth. But there he was, trying to get the meeting started, and not wanting any fuss over his own injury.

His wife became gravely ill, and shortly after,  died in their home. When the nurses were dressing her body, I remember being with him. He was sitting by the window sill, running his finger over the window panes. I have never forgotten that scene for he cast a picture of one who was unbelievably calm, almost totally serene. Here was a man, who in the last half an hour, had just lost his life's companion of some 60 years or so. And yet he so quickly and humbly accepted it from the hands of a good and sovereign God.

I never knew the secret of Uncle Abi’s deep piety and godliness, but it must have had something to do with his surrendered life. For one day when I had to go into his room for something, I found hanging by his study table, this poster that’s been yellowed with age and dog-eared on its corners. It was the only hanging on his wall.
 
And on that poster, were these words by the French mystic Francois Fenelon:

"The peace of the soul consists
     in an absolute resignation
           to the will of God."