Death.
One thinks it is merely a one time experience. A here and then not sort of thing. Sure. The prelude to it may be a long, drawn out, and pitifully painful process. Physical death, though, is a given. We know its coming. For all of us. It’s the very one thing we all have in common.
My time in Cambodia taught me something new about what death is. It’s more than just an ending. It can also be the journey. One can easily spend their whole “alive” time drowning in death.
I speak of more than just the foreboding ominousness of a fatal disease or genetic condition. I speak of more than loss and grief of losing a loved one or one’s self. More than thoughts of suicide or murder.
When I entered Cambodia, it just smelled like death to me. It nearly instantly made my spirit heavy with sorrow. A darkness and fear of life was a thick and settled fog on the streets.
I spent nearly my whole first week in Cambodia just wanting to nap. I simply could not stop desiring the unconscious. I would do house visits and teach English in the mornings, but all afternoon and all night, I’d just sleep. There was no desire to engage or explore the beautiful world around me. I just wanted sleep. Enough was never enough.
It wasn’t until my team and I went to Phnom Penh and toured the S21 prison camp (now genocide museum) that I understood why. I sorta remembered learning about the Pol Pot genocide era in World History, but it got largely overshadowed by the Viet Nam war and the Holocaust. I had totally forgotten about this crime against life.
You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_humanity
But the jist of it is, this guy Pol Pot wanted an aggrarian socialistic society, so he killed everyone with any education or power… estimated somewhere between 2-7 million people.
As I walked through the museum, through the torture chamber rooms, through the 3 by 6 foot starvation stalls, by the mass graves of the killing fields…I finally started to understand why the feeling of death reigned so heavily throughout the country. In the museum were rooms upon rooms filled with walls covered in photos of men, women, and children..taken just before they were executed.
I found myself staring into their faces.
I’m crying even now just thinking of what their thoughts might of been in their final days. No hope. Blood splattering all around them from the torture of their neighbors and themselves.
And I just wanted them to hear me so bad. I wanted to so badly to have been there in those moments to say: “I know this is bad. But God sees you. He loves you. You deserve more than this. Death may be overwhelming you now, but there is real life. In Jesus. You’re worth something. You are more than a future corpse. You have breath and life and hope. They can take your body, but they can’t take your spirit.”
We talk a lot on the race about the power of walking in the opposite spirit of things. Like…the opposite of fear is love. The opposite of corruption is humility. The opposite of pride is brokenness. The opposite of defeat is hope. I could go on. There are so many.
But most importantly, the opposite of death is life. And where there is death, I can choose to go on, in my flesh, promoting it, taking part in it. Sleeping into it. Or I can walk in the opposite spirit and speak words of life. I can walk through a dead forest and have trees and flowers and grass blossom in my wake.
I’m beginning to see that it doesn’t require a psychotic dictator to breed an atmosphere of death.
And Cambodia isn’t the only place where an oppressive spirit of death reigns. It can be in all of us. In our friendships and marriages. In our work places. In our own American cities. We can be promoting death and not even realize it. We can speak ill of someone, or sarcastically put them down, or call them a lost cause. We can believe ourselves that we are worthless and are going nowhere. Apathy and laziness can allow us to ignore situations and people who are drowning in their personal version of walking, breathing death and hopelessness. We can be leaving a trail of death and not even realize it.
So my challenge to you is this:
Be a walking, talking LIFE BRINGER. Create it. Foster it. Speak it into existence where there is none.
Look deep into the faces of the dying all around you.
Where it is easy to give up on your students, your co-workers, your patients, your family…
No matter how untrue you may think the statements may be…
Claim and believe the best over them. That they are beloved. That they are worthy. They are seen and cherished by you and the Father. They do have purpose and are more than just their difficult qualities and screw-ups. They are more than what their circumstances and people around them say they are. They can overcome. They can find joy again. They can find peace again. Love abounding. Hope never ending. Salvation everlasting.
You must go first though. Claim life over your own heart. And you too can walk with blossoms wildly abounding behind you.
