As a native West Virginian and a daughter of a coal miner, I have spent the majority of my life advocating for the coal industry. After all, coal keeps the lights on right? However, it goes without saying that the industry that once sustained the mountain state and provided the nations with energy is now a dying art form. In the last decade, I have watched in fear as mines have shut down due to various restrictions and legislations, leaving countless families without a sustainable job to provide for their families. To the people I grew up with, this reality is earth shattering because it negates everything that they have ever known. It leaves them financially hopeless. Thankfully with local entrepreneurs kick starting the economic growth and an increase in tourism, nonprofit work, and what I believe to be grace from God, my home county is now able to stand on it’s own feet. A cycle driven by hard work and vision have been created by a few pioneers, but the reality remains that dangerous implications of reverberating to familiarity remain close by waiting for those who can’t keep up.
Throughout my time in Cambodia, I have noticed a similar cycle. However, before I am able to explain what I mean, I am going to have to clue you all in on some history. In 1975 a communist group known as Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. By force, they herded the entire nation into labor camps. Their goal was to rid their land of any westernized professionals, the disabled, the elderly, and weak children to rebuild the culture around what they knew, rural life. Within a span of five years, millions of innocent people and any progress made in education, medicine, or economics perished at the hands of a brutal regime. In recent history incredible leaps have been made in the cities to provide factory jobs and university educations – the quality of life has increased exponentially. However, the opposite is true in rural life: these people are largely illiterate, have poor hygiene, and have few options to provide income for themselves. The result of this is that that poor population has to reverberate to the dying familiarity of the rice fields and basket weaving. Does that sound familiar?
My team and I traveled 6 km every day this month into a village where children are taken out of school prematurely to help provide income for their families, the adult population is illiterate, and women are forced to spend 12 hours per day making one basket in hopes of reaping $1 or less in return. Could you imagine working an entire day to only earn $1? Now, imagine doing that for the rest of your life? You see, basket weaving, much like coal mining, is just another disguise for the absence of hope.
Each day as we walked through this village my heart was overwhelmed with the sites around me, but I walk away knowing that because of the gospel there is no true absence of hope. I walk away knowing that the Lord is in fact moving powerfully in Cambodia. I walk away knowing that through the prayers and the diligence of faithful saints that the cycles of familiarity and despair can end. I have hope in knowing that one day all of the physical constraints of life will pass away. There will no longer be a need for coal mining or for basket weaving because our glorified bodies will exist forever in eternity worshipping the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
