Further stories of faith have emerged from the aftermath of the Easter Sri Lanka church attacks.
The children and teachers of Zion Church’s Sunday School were on their way back to the main service for breakfast when a bomb was detonated.
Among those who lost their lives were 13-year-old Jackson and his Sunday School teacher and aunt, Verlini. His father, Verl, said: ‘My son Jackson and my sister died on the spot. My brother-in-law died a week after the incident in the hospital.’
‘Verlini was the one who taught the chil-dren about sin before the blast. She made sure the children confessed their sins and accepted Jesus in the lesson’, he shared. ‘After that, she and the children went down for breakfast and the explosion went off.’
‘Losing someone hurts’, Verl said. ‘They are special people. They were not killed. They were sown. They are like seeds. And the blood of the martyrs are the seeds of the church. Jesus died on Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday he was resurrected. My son, sister, and brother-in-law died, but they were resurrected with Jesus on that day.’
Despite the heartache, grief and loss, Verl committed to dedicating his life to God, even after the accident. ‘God is good’, he said. ‘God is great. My foundation is Jesus Christ. I’m zero. Jesus is everything.’ He continued: ‘My son was mine for 13 years, but he is [Jesus’s] forever.’
All places of worship are now guarded by snipers, and exercise strict protection meas-ures as people enter the buildings. Once inside the hall where the Zion Church now meets (a community centre as the original building is still cordoned off), the joy of worship is clear. ‘When we stepped inside the church, it was a disarming sight – hundreds of worshippers filled the hall, their hands thrown to the sky, shouting “Amen! Hallelujah!’’’ said an Open Doors representative.
Pastor Roshan Mahesan stood in front and honoured the dead. In the blast, 29 people from Zion Church lost their lives. Fourteen of them were children who went down from Sunday School.
‘They are martyrs’, Pastor Roshan said. ‘Now they are home with Jesus.’
He read the names of the injured, stop-ping after every couple of names to give people time to pray. Five members of the church are in Colombo hospital. Some are in another hospital in Kandy. Four others are in an intensive-care unit.
The prayer time was described as people banging ‘on heaven’s gates for healing and ask-ing God to help them love and forgive. It was a kind of wailing I have never heard before’.
The pastor’s message for the day was Daniel 3. ‘Why do we have to walk through this fire?’ asked Pastor Roshan. ‘At this point we may not know why, but God is in the fire with us. God is with us in our suffering. He walks with us and cries with us. He’s the fourth man.’
