Oh India, there are so many words to describe you. Most of them wouldn’t be very complimentary. However, the word that has left it’s mark on me the most is the one, “Broken”. Only a person with a heart of stone could work in one of your slums and not be broken by what they see.
- Absentee fathers that have either gone to the city to work, or have died, or who have just abandoned the family altogether.
- Children who are so precious that are hungry not just for food but for love.
- Women who are strong, even though the men see them as weak. They are the ones who are providing for their families and raising the children.
- Violence- kids are constantly fighting each other, hitting each other not just with their hands but with sticks.
- I meet women who because they have borne daughters, their husbands have left them.
- A precious child of God, who because her two children died short after birth, her husband left her.
- Women who sell themselves so that their children can eat.
- Families who are so poor yet invite us into their homes and share what little they have with us.
- I am broken as I hear the call to prayer a couple of times each week as they seek out Allah and try to earn their way to Paradise.
- Broken by Hindus worshiping one of the 3 million gods knowing that none of the idols are mighty to save. (Isaiah 44:9-20)
- I am broken as I hear a false gospel preached on Sundays…the prosperity gospel.
One passage that I meditated on a lot while i was here was also from Isaiah. Isaiah was prophesying the Messiah.
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 53: 2-9
Christ was willing to be broken for us, because our sins broke His heart. He did all this so that we could have a relationship with his Father.
India is broken because most Indians do not know the Man of sorrows who carries their sorrows. I am broken because I want them to know this Man who has healed me with his stripes. Even though the physical needs are great, their spiritual needs are greater. The founder of World Vision once prayed, “God break my heart for the things that break yours”. I too, have prayed that prayer and am broken.
