Today blew my mind. I have been waiting for this for years. Years, I tell you! I can’t believe I finally saw it. I have been looking at pictures and reading about it in books and desiring to see it for as long as I knew it existed. It had always been a dream of mine, and it seemed like I might have to wait for years to come here, but here I am.
I went to Angkor Wat.
God is so so good to his children.
Mind. BLOWN.
If you don’t know me, you might not understand how truly exhilarated I am by this. You might not understand the sheer giddiness that comes with this experience. Little kids going to Disneyland for the first time are less excited than I am. It’s hard to picture, but I swear it’s true.
My major was history. It’s the one subject that I adore with all of my heart. It’s exactly how my brain works. I connect people, places, times, things, events. I look at big pictures and see how the small details fit into the larger.
At Madison, I would spend hours at our Humanities library simply looking at books, wondering who wrote them, who read them. I read historical fiction for fun. I am a huge facts and information person. I have a running list of all the wonders of the world, of every palace / castle / monument that I deem worthy of seeing. If you ever visit a country, I can probably tell you the number one thing to see there. I’m minorly obsessed with history.
#understatement
Two years ago, one of my good friends gave me some feedback. She knew that I had been holding onto my list with hands clenched and said I needed to give it up to the Lord. That my life was not to be measured by how many places I had been to. She told me I wasn’t failing if I didn’t see them all, and I needed to let it go.
I did, and I didn’t expect God to give back so much.
But that’s just what he does.
He brought me to Cambodia.
He gave me debrief here and I had time to see the largest religious complex in the world.
I woke up at 4:00 am, excited. We got into a tuk tuk at 4:45 and arrived there by 5:00, just in time to see the sun start rising over the reflecting pool.
It was breathtaking.
I spent the next eight hours exploring the different temples (there’s more than just the one) with a few squad mates. Yet, while there had been more than twenty of us originally, only four of us stayed to see the extra temples. The rest went back home, which truth be told flabbergasted me.
How could you not want to spend all day exploring?!
They didn’t understand my fascination. To them, all of the temples look(ed) the same. Stone structure, same design, blah, blah, blah. So, later, when I explained to a squadmate why I loved it so much, they were equally flabbergasted at me as I was at them.
To me, it’s not just a temple. It’s not simply a series of buildings that were created in the 12th century and dedicated to the Hindu goddess Vishnu. It is so much more than that. Each temple tells a story – there are unique carvings on each. Each has a purpose. Each has a different feel. Some are built out of completely different stones than others. Yet, when I look at those stones, I don’t even see the false gods they represent. I see Jesus.
In that temple, I see the love of Christ. I honestly do. My God created this whole world. He created every single thing in it and he is the most genius of all. He made flamingoes, people, and geysers. He instilled within us his creativity, and throughout history, people have run with that.
We built the Pyramids. We constructed Stonehenge. We planned the Parthenon.
I don’t care who you are, these things are freaking impressive.
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Did you know that Angkor Wat is perfectly lined up astronomically?
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Did you know that the marble column drums of the Parthenon actually have wooden joints that are still perfectly preserved after thousands of years? When the reconstruction project took them apart, they could still smell the cedar.
- Did you know that the Roman Empire built aqueducts so precise, the gradient only changed a quarter inch every hundred feet?
The creativity and genius of God, is instilled within us. Within broken, beautiful people.
And that astounds me.
Absolutely floors me.
When I see Angkor Wat, I don’t think of anything but how brilliant God is, and how brilliant his children are. I imagine him as a father who is so excited when his kids use their imagination to build castles out of legos. It doesn’t matter to me that the people who built this temple weren’t dedicating it to Jesus, because I know that without God, they wouldn’t have been able to build it in the first place.
While wandering around, I giggled. I skipped. I sang worship songs aloud. One man passed me and remarked, “Wow, you’re happy!” Yeah. I am. I’m overjoyed. My Papa loves the mess out of me.
Today, his love came in the form of a nine hundred year old temple.
And it was the best present I could have gotten.
