I kissed each of her wrinkled cheeks as she wept. She grasped my hands and wouldn’t let go. Love infusing the moment.
——
I sat with my team sat beneath a straw roof on bamboo mats brought to us by the villagers. Buddhists and Hindus and atheists welcomed the Christian missionaries into their community, so beautifully respectful and hospitable. We began speaking to them about the love of Jesus.
A woman in red sat among the crowd that had gathered at our presence, her painted red dot glistening on her forehead, a visible sign of Hinduism in this culture. She sat on her mat with crossed legs and hands clasped in front of her face. Only her eyes were visible over her hands, and tears were streaming from them as we spoke. She closed her eyes for seconds at a time, seeming to bask in each word spoken of the rabbi Christ who lived and loved thousands of years ago.
I had never see the gospel message affect someone so deeply. I knew I needed to go to her, to hug her, to something.
We finished speaking and I walked over to the woman. I wasn’t thinking about the language barrier, that my words couldn’t carry any meaning to her whatsoever, but I was thinking of the message we had just shared—that love in its truest form transcends language, culture, religion. I needed to hug this Hindu woman.
When I reached her we gripped each other’s hands—hers wrinkled with age, the perfect grandmother’s hands—as if we’d known each other all her years on this earth. She put my palm to her tear-streamed cheek, holding my face as I held hers. I kissed the red dot on her forehead, and my eyes filled with tears as I drew back to see a beautiful, weary woman standing in front of me. Victor Hugo is known for saying, “When a woman is talking, listen to what she says with her eyes.” And her brown eyes disclosed a deep heaviness I seemed to be able to feel in my own spirit.
So we stood, and we cried, and we kissed each other’s hands and faces. And that was it.
I don’t know her story; I don’t know her struggles; I don’t know her name. I don’t even know why this moment felt so particularly powerful that it should be included in this series. I didn’t say any groundbreaking words, or baptize her, or do anything other than introduce her to empathy and love. But there was something supernatural/indescribable/“God” about it all. A confused young woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing or where she’s going half the time, and a wrinkly, weary Hindu grandmother in red. Holding each other’s faces, crying each other’s tears.
On this thing called the World Race I’ve experienced a love that weeps. That rejoices. That acts, welcomes, and pursues. It’s causeless and conditionless, and sometimes wordless. Love exists with or without a religion, with or without a relationship, and with or without a reason.
While I may not be the most gifted evangelist or the most qualified missionary, I have two working hands and two active tear ducts, and Jesus has done a lot more with a lot less.
Amen. Let it be so.
