I’ve tried to write a blog about the past few weeks too many times to count, but nothing feels right about what I have to say. Everything feels pretentious or repetitive and I’m at a loss for what to talk about. I have spent the last two weeks in Pakse, Laos with my team and I’ve loved every second of it, but it’s been difficult. The people are wonderful, the atmosphere is great, the food is amazing, but there’s something missing.
While I have been here, our contacts took us to a church and I loved it. The people were so unbelievably in love with the Lord, they had fun, and they treated us like friends, but during the message I saw something that really hit me hard. While we were worshipping, I looked out of the window and saw two young monks walking around a pond just outside. They stood out against the tall green grass in their bright orange robes. As I watched them, I saw them watching us. They stood outside the small window for just a few seconds longer than would be considered socially acceptable.
I don’t know what they were thinking, but I know what I was thinking as I saw them. I said a quick prayer for them as I was surrounded by all of these wonderful Lao people worshipping the One True God. I simply asked God to make Himself known in this place and to let those who would work most for His glory see Him. I don’t know where that came from because prayer has never been my first instinct and that’s not something that I would normally pray for unless I was prompted to do so by a contact or a teammate. Any other time I just would have said to myself, “Hey look. There’s a Monk,” and that would be the end of it.
I think the difference this time was that it really hit me that these Monks are going to spend their entire life searching for a truth that they aren’t going to find if they don’t change the places their looking. They’re going to waste their entire lives searching and never experiencing God or knowing that He loves them all because they’re simply looking in the wrong place and expecting too much from man-made gods and idols.
While all of this was running through my head in those few short seconds, it also struck me that the only way that Monks in Laos or anyone anywhere is going to know the God that I know is if Christians continue to spread the word by loving people and serving them the way that Jesus did. Over the past year it has become extremely important to me that Christians show love more than just simply saying what they believe. It’s something I want to challenge myself to do every single day for the rest of my life and not just while I’m on the Race. Seeing those two Monks staring at us worshipping only reinforced that conviction.
