The God of the Margins is a unique self-explorative and self-reflective lamentation of a Christian who does not settle with the comfortable reality in which our personal faith is strictly separated from the disturbing reality of everyday life. The author forces himself into the incommodious position of reflection over the line where our personal faith and understanding of Jesus Christ as our savior and redeemer, our noble principles on which we build our lives, collide with the rough reality of the street, the cruelty of social issues like discrimination, crime, ignorance, and poverty, and the seamy side of globalization. Ultimately, the author is intending to move us to become the real ambassadors of Jesus’ love, the love that is expressed in acts of siding with the poor and the oppressed making those in the margins as Heroes.

Reading these poems will be disturbing for most of us, I know, but it can help those who are willing to gain a clear conscience before God and man especially in caring for the marginalized and taking a stand for Justice. The concerns and insights expressed in understandable poetic language enable us to follow the biblical mandate for providing the opportunity to experience life in all its fullness to all by bringing those in the periphery to the centre.

• Dr. George Samuel, Formerly Nuclear Scientist, Former Board Member World Vision International, Currently President, Olive Theological Institute, Thiruvalla.