At the end of this month, our squad had a Leadership Development Weekend (LDW) in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Our whole squad stayed in a hostel and had a few days of teachings, worship, and rest.
I began to notice an old man with frail legs on a walker, who was staying there as well. Each night he was alone. Each night was the same ritual: sitting in the same seat, ordering a pitcher of beer, staring out into the nothingness in front of him, smoking a cigarette or two or three, eventually ordering dinner, getting slightly drunk, and eventually returning to his room inside.
The second night I saw this, I mentioned to a friend who I was grabbing dinner with that I wanted to talk to the man. His response was, “The whole squad is here. I’m sure someone else has talked to him.” I was hoping he would go with me to talk to the man, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen.
The next night I was getting dinner with my old teammate, Eric. We had a lot to catch up on and this was our only time to really talk before setting out to our next month of different ministries once again. The minute we stepped out the front door, I saw this man again. He had just ordered his first pitcher of beer. We passed by him and when we got a few steps away, I couldn’t help but tell Eric how I had been wanting to talk to this man all weekend. Before anything else came out of my mouth, I hear, “Yea, totally, let’s do it.” He turns right around and a second later introduces himself and me to our new friend Bill.
For the next hour and a half, we got to hear nonstop all about the random ins and outs of Bill’s life. How he grew up in England, worked in Africa in the diamond mining industry, moved to Laos to teach English, eventually coming to Cambodia in the recent years. About eight months ago, he was walking down a gravel road when a pack of dogs ran in front of him and he fell over one, breaking his right femur. He didn’t have insurance and wasn’t able to get surgery right away. Health care in Cambodia wasn’t nearly as good either, so things got worse. He had been living in this hostel for three months already, waiting to collect money to have surgery again. Towards the end of our time with him, he kept looking up at us, apologizing continuously. We reassured him that he was completely fine and we were enjoying just listening to him.
He proceeded to say, “I’m so sorry. You just don’t understand. It’s been weeks since the last time I’ve had the chance to talk to someone and when you’re just alone all the time, just you and your TV, and that’s it, sometimes when I get the chance to talk I just can’t help myself and I just can’t stop talking. I’ve been living at this hostel for three months now, and I haven’t been able to go any farther than the front porch with my leg. It gets really lonely. I’m so sorry.”
In that moment, my heart broke. I realized how there was absolutely nothing else that we could have done the whole weekend to better spend our time. Not go to dinner. Not catch up on life. Not even share much of anything about our own selves to this man. All we were supposed to do, all that we needed to do, was to sit and listen and spend time with Bill.
Please take time to notice the people around you today. It could make a world of difference. It’s not someone else’s job to take the time or make a difference. It’s your responsibility. God builds a heart of compassion into each of us. Our willingness and awareness is a tool for the Kingdom. It’s a tool to bring encouragement and life into this world that is so full of loneliness and hurt. No matter where you are in life personally, know that you are equipped to bring hope into any situation when you have the Living God inside of you, the Spirit to lead you, and Jesus as the ultimate example of love.
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I wrote this on our long bus ride the next morning from Cambodia to Vietnam:
“I’ve been on the World Race for ten months now and I still don’t have any true concept of poverty. Me, sitting here, typing on my Mac computer. I am probably carrying well over 2000 USD worth of gear on me all over right now, accumulating more, losing some, each month. It’s still crazy to look out the window and see naked children, houses in shambles, shirtless farmers with their water buffalo out in the endless fields. As we drive by I wonder about their lives.
How could I even compare myself to the woman missing her leg, trying to sell hand painted cards on the street? Or the countless men we get annoyed with, asking us if we need a tuc tuc every few minutes, “What about tomorrow?” being their next question.
What is this life that I have and how do I deserve any more than everyone else in the world? The truth is I don’t. We live on less than 5 USD a day for food on the Race, for instance. But even this past month, that’s not really true. Coming into Cambodia, conditions were tougher than normal. We weren’t even in the bush, but living in an office space wasn’t ideal. Ants were everywhere, eating my food. I would wake up countless times throughout the nights slapping tiny red ants as they crawled all over me, biting me. The heat made it miserable, but even then, we had a fan in our room.
All this to say, what is my live other than a cushion to the lives of the rest of the world? Even when we had a budget of 4USD for food a day, and at first could not find options under that amount, at the end of the day, I still had the luxury of dipping into my personal account to treat myself to a few comforts a week. But why is that even fair that I have a cushion? (Cambodia is a strange compilation of the most poverty I’ve seen, mixed with American food prices.)
The World Race is simply a glimpse of this world around me. I’ve changed, but that doesn’t change the world… yet, that is. Honestly, today even thinking about all of this makes me so sad. I realized all of this when I looked down at the shirt I was wearing. It’s a WR shirt that says, “Feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick.”
It hit me. I’m ten months into this, but even then am I living any of that out? Am I really taking the Kingdom mindset to heart every single day with the power and authority that God has already given to me? Have I believed in the statements I wear and so clearly advertise on my shirt?
The answer is sometimes. Sometimes I love well. Sometimes I completely disregard everyone around me. I know that you cannot help every single person every single day, but there is something inside of me that’s convicting me of my own sense of love. Do I love people enough to sacrifice my own “precious” time to just sit with them? Or do I walk by and just push any thoughts to the side?
I can tell you, I don’t want to be the second person. God formed my heart. He created me in His image and I’m meant to live out a life reflecting the love of God. I want to learn to see every person I walk past with a heart of compassion. I want to care enough to stop for the one.”
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I realize that when I wrote this, I was being hard on myself. This was trailing off of spending time with Bill the night before and how heartbroken I was for him. It’s important to keep my heart in check every single day, though, and realize that there is always more to learn, more to realize, more people to see. My prayer is that each day I will hold onto a willing heart and be ready. Ready to take hold of whatever the Lord is calling me to do that day. Whether it’s a simple conversation, a heart check, or sharing the gospel. All I have to do is keep my eyes open.
