Nepal Update #1:
Being in Nepal has been pretty tough for me to be honest. It is a chaotic city with lots of pollution, noise, idolatry, and activity all the time. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me so much but I have been feeling quite overstimulated here. My squadmates have not agreed with me and many of them have fallen deeply in love with this country. I began to wonder if I had missed something. Have I not seen what everyone else is seeing? Is my heart still working through last month in India to the point where I can’t enjoy this time here? I think it may be a mixture of both, but The Lord redeemed much of this throughout the past couple days.
We arrived in Nepal after a couple long flights and even longer layovers. We spent four days in the Thamel area of Kathmandu for a debrief with our squad leaders, our squad mentors, and our squad mom and dad. This was a time of intended rest where we had the opportunity to seek counseling, receive feedback, be refilled and encouraged, and simply process our first month on the race and look forward with anticipation to month two. After debrief, we arrived at our ministry contact site where we will be staying for the next month. Our packs have officially exploded, we have enjoyed the local food and bakeries around us, and we have walked countless miles around this bustling city of Kathmandu. On top of all of that, we have had the opportunity to go to several of the Buddhist and Hindu temples around Kathmandu that are some of the most important temples in each religion.
The first temple we went to filled me with such heaviness and sorrow for the people who were walking continuously around the grounds, bowing in prayer, falling flat on their bellies in worship, spinning the hundreds of prayer wheels and ringing the many bells. People stared curiously at us as we joined them in walking around but the empty stares that consumed literally all of their faces filled my heart and spirit with complete sorrow. These people were completing all these many traditions and rituals in search of peace, love, happiness, and prosperity, and yet, each and every one of their faces held an emptiness that scared me and a longing that filled me with sadness. While we walked, we prayed. We prayed that their chanting and prayers would be interrupted (a few times it actually happened and it was the coolest thing), we prayed that they would find what they were looking for in the only source that has it, and we prayed that love would ultimately change their lives. After this temple, we went on a surprise hike to the top of one of the tallest points in Kathmandu that is also home to another temple. This particular temple is for one of the gods of fertility. The Hindu religion has over 33 million gods and this was only one of them specializing in fertility. As we hiked the mountain (Jesus totally helped my lungs and I made it to the top with no problems!!!) we couldn’t help but wonder what the top held. We heard stories of vast and beautiful views, a powerful temple, and people seeking help with having children. We stopped about 5 minutes from the top and from the temple itself and had a wonderful worship session proclaiming the love and victory that is found only in Jesus. After, we approached the temple with respect and reverence for the people who were there. As I peered inside, there was an alter and a priest who was chanting and singing prayers for the women who were kneeling inside. The alter was splattered with colorful pigment powder, money, oils, water, coins, flowers, food, and other items all as an offering for the god of fertility in hopes of being cured and given the gift of children.
We visited another temple but this time, it was an entire community compound. As we entered, it was vastly different than the Buddhist temples we had previously visited. There were beggars, children, older people, people in full traditional dress as the specific gods, shops, houses, slums, food stands, and many religious buildings. I was wandering around with one of my team members and two Swedish girls who are working with the same ministry we are, and we found ourselves in their elderly home. A grand building with many people coming in an out of it, we were beckoned inside by several beggars and tour guides. As we entered, we greeted the elderly who were sitting at the gates with the traditional hands together and head bow “Namaste.” Directly inside was a group of elderly women who were sitting on a raised platform under a balcony away from the sun. They each had a small task they were working on. We decided to remove our shoes and sit cross legged with them and just wait to see what would happen. The women immediately responded with joyful giggles and inviting gestures. They let us partake in their tasks of making wicks for candles, smashing shards of pottery into dust, and drying food. We were given gifts of some kind of bitter/sweet white root cut into chunks and dipped in a chili salt (SO HOT) and cookies. Although we couldn’t communicate via words, we simply sat. We met them. We laughed. We ate their snacks with them. We watched. We learned. And we prayed out loud over them with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.
There are temples and shrines literally everywhere. In walls on the sides of streets. In temples on the mountain tops. In restaurants and businesses. You cannot look at a curtain, a painting, a window, or a billboard without seeing the depth of the idolatry that permeates this country. There is only 1% of the population here that is Christian. But besides that, Nepal was named the #1 country for the fastest growing population of Christianity and churches being built. The Lord is on the move and he is reclaiming this group of passionate people for himself.
The morning after we visited the temple of the fertility god, The Lord gave me this vision:
Suddenly I was looking at my life on the inside. I was looking at my heart as if it were a city. There were temples placed throughout the city and even some shrines at the top of mountains that decorated the very culture of my life. These temples were things of idolatry that I have allowed to live and grow in my life. Inside each of these temples was an alter just like the one I saw at the top of the mountain. Just as people had thrown money, color pigment, oils, flowers etc on the alters in the temples we visited, so have I thrown my own gifts at these idols in my life. I have thrown money, time, my identity, my love, my peace, my joy….all of these things decorated the alters. Suddenly, I understood exactly why I had such a heavy heart in the presence of all of these temples in Nepal. It is because I have the same problem with idolatry that these people do, the only difference is, I claim to serve one God but internally, I have made several gods permissible in my life. He simply then changed the vision to an empty room. I had a choice before me: repent and taste more of freedom and a passionate love pursuit, or continue on in my adulterous worship with walls that kept me from the loving embrace of my one, true God.
The thing is, I serve a jealous God. But his jealousy is not rooted in fear, intimidation, acts of service, obligatory rituals, or tradition. His jealousy for me is rooted in a deep and passionate love that has spurred on his very act of grace and redemption through the death of His son. His jealousy is righteous and passionate and I have opted for the empty promises of other gods that I hoped would serve me better. The truth is, I ended up serving them with no return.
It’s not like that with Jesus. There is nothing we can do to earn or gain the love that he so willingly wants to shower on us. We don’t need to throw rituals or traditions on the alter before him. He loves us and the response to such a grand love is to throw ourselves on that very alter. But it’s not in vain. He returns to us a new and improved version of ourselves. A version that more closely reflects him. A version that is unblemished and untainted by the dirt and sorrow around us. The alter before him isn’t full of money, time, or works. It is full of broken people that he makes whole and beautiful through grace, love, and his own sacrifice, not ours.
I am learning so much about the reality of idolatry. But even more than that, I am learning about the jealous love that The Lord has for me.
These are just a few of the encounters we’ve had our first week here!
Friends, something happened today that changed my life, but I will be posting a new blog entry about it since this one turned out to already be long enough 😉 Check out the next blog post for something that truly rocked my world today.
Because of Him,
Rachel
