A blog a wrote last week while in Thailand, we are now in Malaysia! Since Malaysia is a closed country, the password to read my blog is “Littlemiller”.
Yesterday, to make our way to a children’s home in Bangkok, we took a Grab (Asia’s Uber). The car ride was a little over an hour, so why not get to know our driver? Making new friends. My favorite thing! ?? My teammate, Hannah, and I asked all about his life, family, beliefs, and hobbies. It’s not weird or rude to ask someone deeper questions here, people are happy to share about who they are and want to make friends with us. I think that’s what all humans desire, but we create boundaries in order to “protect” ourselves, just in case someone’s intention is to hurt us. But not with Chit, Chit goes deep. Chit gets real with Chit. ….. 😉
I really liked Chit, I especially liked his name. Chit is a smiley old man who was born and raised in Bangkok. He retired from working for the government, but he said sitting at home was too boring for him so he picked up this new job as a Grab driver. He spent some time in Washington State, while studying, so his English gave us the opportunity to have a wonderful conversation. He shared about his hardships with his kids and also his wife leaving him. He shared the things he does and doesn’t understand about life with us.
Once telling us about his Buddhist values and beliefs, he asked about ours. We told him how if we died, we knew we’d go to Heaven and that we put our hope in Jesus. He laughed at that, not in a rude way, but I think it was hard for him to believe our certainty in our eternity.
As Chit was talking about reincarnation and going to Heaven or Hell (depending on what you deserve), in a funny way- it lead me to FINALLY believe the Gospel. I finally realized I hadn’t accepted the real Gospel in its entirety.
Now, hang with me…. I promise I’m still saved. Hahahaha
As I subconsciously compared Christianity and Buddhism in my mind, I realized that sometimes I have the mentality of a Buddhist. Buddhism teaches people to do good works in order to get into Heaven or be reincarnated as something better than you were before. As humans, we want to “earn” it. I want to earn my salvation. I want to earn my favor from God. I want God to bless me because I earned it. If people don’t receive good things, it’s probably because they didn’t work hard enough…… that way of thinking isn’t the Gospel.
The Gospel is grace. The Gospel is freely given. The Gospel is be over do. The Gospel doesn’t want a performance, it chases after the heart.
Hannah shared the story of Jesus with him and he said he had never heard it before. He admitted before that sometimes he prays to “The Christian God” and that He always answers his prayers.
The rest of the car ride we talked together about grace. It’s so good and it’s so difficult to wrap our brain around it because that’s not how our world today works. It doesn’t make sense to the human mind.
Doing good things are good. But man, how freeing it is to discover more of The Father’s grace and love for us more and more each day. Yesterday Chit unknowingly reminded me to walk in being for Jesus rather than doing– something I have to constantly relearn and rediscover.
