Jai Masih!

Jai Masih!  
     Hello from India!  Jai Masih is the way that Christians greet each other here, and it means the Messiah is victorious.  He truly is!
     We arrived in Siliguri, India, from Kathmandu, Nepal, via a 16 hour, over-night bus ride. The bus was relatively small and the ride was bumpy, but I managed to sleep remarkably well despite that.  There was no air conditioning, which was okay since the night air cools down remarkably this far north.  However, the bus DID have a working, low-quality, television set, though, with speakers that worked even better.  This means that I received three gratuitous hours of gore, fighting, muscles, romance and tragedy... including an introduction to Bollywood in the form of the movie Bang Bang.   My education is expanding exponentially!

     These past couple days we have been with ACTION India.  We have driven around in a rugged Land Rover (this is a picture that I took.  I am trying to capture more of our moments on this trip!)




We have visited Darjeeling and sampled its teas  (this is not a picture that I took, but it looks a lot like what we saw)











     We worshipped with Nepali/Indian believers.  In church on Sunday they asked us to introduce ourselves, so we did and sang "Amazing Grace" for them.  It is the same song that we sang in Mongolia in the church of homeless believers.  And, as in Mongolia, several people recognized the song and joined us in singing the words.  It is wonderful to know that we are all saved by the same God whose grace is truly amazing!  And, one day, we will all praise Him for ten thousand years, and ten thousand more, when Jesus returns!
     Tomorrow, we are also visiting some village churches to worship with them.  Some of our team-mates will be sharing God's Word through a translator.  This is a special opportunity, and will you pray that God will give us words to share, boldness to speak, and grace to bless and encourage our fellow believers here in India?  Thank you!

Horror... and Hope

     Last Monday in Cambodia, we visited the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Prison Museum, and I almost threw up.  The atrocities committed under Pol Pot are nauseated me more than tortuous car rides and bumpy airplane flights.  I can better understand now what Maria, a Filipino woman I met in Phnom Penh, meant when she said that she wished she could bring all Cambodians together at the Killing Fields so that they could just weep and lament the horror of their history together!
     It is said that one death is a tragedy; a thousand is a statistic.  But how was I to respond to the personal individual stories of the Killing Fields' audio tour, which were then multiplied into the thousands by the numerous photographed faces in the Prison Museum?
     These faces of the prison's many inmates fascinated me, and I looked at them one by one for a long time.  Some had friendly-looking faces, most were sad.  Some had angry eyes, bruised eyes with bloody faces, confused eyes, hurt eyes, hardened eyes, closed eyes.  Each had a story, a family, a life.  So many people hurt, killed.  Pol Pot said that it is "better to kill an innocent by mistake than to spare an enemy by mistake."   No one is safe in a society based on lies and fear!

     I wondered how many of these people represented by photograph after photograph of men, women, children and elderly knew Jesus.
     I wondered how it was possible for all this to happen, and at the same time for the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot to have a seat in the United Nations and to be recognized as the legitimate Cambodian government by Germany, Australia, the UK, the US, and France.

     Then, in the midst of the horror and incredulous wondering, something beyond these sobering realities surprised me.
     Hope.
     I found hope in the midst of this place.  I found it in an unlikely spot as I stood, staring, at the killing tree in the midst of the killing fields.
     As I looked at this tree, I felt a constricting sorrow and I sensed that if someone looked at my eyes in that moment they would see sadness and a profound oldness.  It is actually a feeling that I felt often when I first came back to Canada with my family.  My eyes felt old from seeing so much poverty and addictions, from being unable to save the people I loved most from pain, from almost losing the knowledge of how to live.  I remember thinking that this underlying sadness would never leave and my eyes would always be sad, old eyes in a young face.
     Yet, as I re-felt this feeling in front of the killing tree in Cambodia, I realized that God has begun to heal the hurts of the past in my life.  I can laugh freely again.  I can enjoy friendships.  Jesus is restoring relationships, hope and joy in my life.  So, as I stood on a plot of ground darkened with the blood of countless Cambodians, I felt a ray of hope.  God is restoring to me the years that the locusts have eaten, and I know that He can do the same in the lives of the Cambodian people.
     I still don't know how to totally process all that I saw and learned that day.  Such intense suffering cannot be glossed over lightly.  One of my team-mates said that she saw a wall in the prison where visitors had graffittied all sorts of things, like "How can you believe there is a God when things like this happen?"
 ... ah, and isn't that an age-old question.  I don't want to brush aside any of the horror of what happened here.  But I also know that in that place I saw a glimmer of God's hope, and that is something that I personally take away from that day, if nothing else.
 
I would like to leave you with some verses that came to mind as I thought about what had all happened on the tuktuk ride back to our hotel:
 
"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.  You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you."  Joel 2:25-26

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy
Spirit you may abound in hope."  Romans 15:13

From the other side

     It is interesting to listen for a little while on 'the other side' of things.  At Tiananmen Square, Kara, Sarah and I snapped a couple selfies with Mao, whose picture adorned a large red wall with Chinese characters around it.  I expressed my curiosity as to their meaning out loud, and Kara graciously volunteered to 'translate':  "It says:  Communism is the bomb."

     While Communism may not quite be 'the bomb', visiting Communist nations has given me an awareness and appreciation for some of its more positive aspects which I am not accustomed to hearing about.  

     For example, in Russia people expressed appreciation for how Putin has brought a level of stability to life there.  If nothing else, he has provided a sense of security and national unity.  

     In Mongolia, illiteracy is currently a problem.  However, under Communist China, education was considered very important and apparently literacy rates were near 100%.  

     In China, we visited two Three Self Churches on Sunday.  In the one, the pastor spoke on unity from Psalm 133.  To me, it seemed like a pep talk on harmony with examples from history more than a message about Christ.  It fit what I had expected from a Three Self Church, to be honest.  However, at the second one that we visited, I was impressed by the pastor's testimony and emphasis on Christ and His work.  She came from a non-Christian family, and studied music at the university.  One Sunday she randomly walked with a group of people into a church, and was strongly touched by the song that they were singing, "In the Cross" by Fanny Crosby.  The Holy Spirit was at work in her heart, she said, and she asked to join the choir.  That began her journey in coming to know Christ.  And now she is a pastor, sharing the gospel and planting churches through a government-sponsored church.  God is at work in powerful and surprising ways!  

     I am not really sure what the conclusion to this post should be.  So maybe I will end with a verse from Habakkuk:  "Look among the nations and watch—be utterly astounded!  For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you." 

     My prayer is that we would have eyes to see what God is doing, a desire to take part in His kingdom work, and a heart to praise and worship Him for what He is doing and has done! 

Shiva: A Hindu god in a Buddhist land

     Last night we flew into Cambodia from Thailand, where we spent time in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Today we spent the day visiting Angkor Wat, a famous temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Time seemed as motionless as the warm air hovering above our sticky bodies.  Crickets and birds repeated the same cadences.  The trees alone appeared to live as they encompass the timeless ruins, but they too are rooted in the depths of time.
     The temples themselves are inhabited by gods just as ancient.  Cambodia's main religion officially shifted from Hinduism to Buddhism in the 1100s AD, but at the originally Hindu temple of Angkor Wat, Hindu deities still vie for preeminence with Buddha.  Statues of Buddha meditate in small alcoves as carvings of Shiva meditate on the walls outside.
     A tour guide came by as I was examining one bas-relief of Shiva.  So I eavesdropped as the guide told a story of Shiva, the Hindu god of creation and destruction.  This god often meditates, and his wife misses him.  So one time she commissioned a messenger to make Shiva remember her.  This messenger took a stick of sugar cane along with a lotus blossom--a sacred flower which resembles the shape of a temple--and shot the arrow at Shiva's heart.
     This method was effective in that it disturbed Shiva's meditation, though he did not immediately think of his wife.  In great anger he turned on the messenger who thus disturbed him and opened his third eye at him, thereby killing him.  But then the arrow effectively entered his heart and he remembered his wife and how much he missed her.  He returned to see her, and she was very happy.
However, she was not so happy that he had killed her messenger, and told Shiva so.  Thankfully, though, Shiva is the creator as well as destroyer god, and he was able to return the messenger to life.

     I am continually surprised at how openly religious the Buddhist countries of Thailand and Cambodia are after visiting so many Communist ones.  The people here openly talk about spiritual matters.  For example, on our taxi ride back from the airport last night, we asked the driver if it was supposed to rain today.  He answered that he did not know, it depended on the mood of Indra, the Hindu god of rain.  Their religion deeply penetrates everywhere, much like the vines that take over the trees here.  And, like the vines, it often chokes out the tree and kills it as well.  I pray that the hope of God will set them free!  My prayer is that they would know the true God, and that He would set them free through Jesus Christ!  Because, in the end, neither Buddha nor Shiva really reigns in this land.  "For kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations"  (Psalm 22:28)