(NEPAL)
– Reoccuring Thought: In India we used to start off our bible study with a random question of the day. Mark asked us which movies or books we see as analogies to the gospel. Of course there are the more obvious answers of Star Wars, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc., but once I really started to think about it, I could recognize that everything in this earth is an analogy of the gospel. Every movie, book, song, etc. shows awe, need, or reverence for the Lord. Our whole argument of non-secular vs. secular isn’t even really a valid concept at all. God isn’t confined to “non-secular” things and he isn’t missing from the “secular” world; when we label things in this world according to secular and non-secular we miss so much of what He’s doing. We can see desperation or longing for God in non-christian music the same way we can see awe for the Lord in worship music. Everything reflects Jesus, whether consciously or not. It’s incredible how our creations and ambitions, whether righteous or not, are a reflection of our need for Jesus. The devotion and reverence we see from the followers at Hindu and Buddhist temples reflect an understanding for our own human need for a savior; they recognize and desire a Lord to live for. We could choose to go into the temples every day and look for darkness, but instead wouldn’t it be easier to ask the Lord where He is in all of it? If He is abundant in everything, why not in the midst of a Hindu temple? He is just as steadily working on their hearts as He is mine. And instead of looking at those who have strayed from the Lord and feeling despair, I can choose to look for reflections of the Lord and see that he is still working and will continue to do so.
– Things that our living situation this month has taught me:
– Nothing brings you closer as a group of people than fighting over the bathrooms at 3:00 AM because of the flu/ an unidentified sickness.
– Nothing makes you more homesick than running down to the stairs trying to find an empty bathroom, not finding one in time, throwing up on the stairs, and then proceeding to clean it up.
– Nothing makes you laugh harder than running down to the stairs trying to find an empty bathroom, not finding one in time, throwing up on the stairs, and then proceeding to clean it up.
– If someone leaves nail polish in the common room everyone will be wearing it by the end of the week, even if it is yellow.
– Walking around barefoot in a clean house is one of the biggest luxuries.
– Community is one of the greatest gifts the Lord gives to us. Nothing pushes you more to live wildly, serve despite any personal circumstance, and pursue love more tangibly than living with thirty-five women whose various gifts and abilities reflect so many different faces of the Lord.
– Culture: The other day an older woman walked up to Rachel, Abby, and I and communicated that she wanted us to see her house; I still don’t know how we understood her, considering she didn’t know any English. For two straight hours we looked through her family albums as her husband, who knew a little bit of English, pointed to each person telling us their relations. It’s probably safe to say that I know the lineage of this family as well as my own. We decided to come back the next day when her son would be there, so that he could translate for us. As we were leaving, the older woman told us that she thought of us as her own children. We had barely communicated with this woman and she had already told us that she loved us like one of her own. Every time something like this happens, I am reminded of how out of my element I really am. Each new culture we submerge ourselves in shocks me all over again. Each church we visit that welcomes eighteen and nineteen year old women to preach the Sunday message confuses me. Each house that we are invited into, whether it’s just to sit on their bed and watch the news or to look at their photos while drinking tea, becomes a home away from home. Each shack that sits beside a mansion reminds me how far away I am from my own home. Each story of abuse and addiction brings a whole new wave of compassion for this world. I heard the phrase, “I am beautifully in over my head”, in a song and I don’t think anything else could explain my situation more perfectly. Yes, I am way under qualified for all of this and yes, most of the time I am in a constant state of confusion and ignorance about what’s going on around me, but I like to think that the Lord loves nothing more than being the only thing that I am sure of. I also like to think that we will never feel one hundred percent confident in the situation of this world, because the only thing that deserves our full confidence and trust is Christ. This constant feeling of not quite fitting in with my surroundings leads me to focus more on fitting right with him, rather than anything of this earth. We hear it all the time, but it’s true that when you have nothing sturdy to hold onto you latch a little harder onto the Lord. So lately every time I’ve felt hopelessly out of my depth, I just think of myself as beautifully in over my head.
