I think you would love the tight streets of this city.
This month, we live in a subset of the city of Kathmandu called Gurjudhara (Goo-Jew-Hodd-Uh). We are 45 minutes by a morning bus up nearer to the mountains. It’s still really packed here—they say Nepal is 10 times slower than India but much faster than anything New York City has to offer.
As my team and I were walking back from ministry this afternoon, I couldn’t help but look up as I walked toward home. It’s a 20-minute’s climb through people, shops, temples, water pumps and stray animals to get home from ministry. The streets are small, but the buildings are high and old. I was amazed as I looked upward for the first time today and saw the architecture of the old buildings where the poorest of the people live. The buildings are tall and are crumbling. Where rooms have eroded, people hang their laundry from the dying columns of a building. Puppies roam the deserted rooms, finding corners to nestle into for the unforgiving winter darkness.
As we walked past one of the shrines on the street, I realized how haunted this place is. The streets echo an eerie whisper of false gods—false gods who will never answer their followers cries and sacrifices. We walked past a group of believers last week who sacrificed a live water buffalo in front of our eyes. They sang hymns as a man with a really big knife slit the buffalo in the middle of the street. People cheered and the incense was burned.
It’s just now hitting home that Paul was talking about these false gods…not just the ones that Americans make in their minds. These people are dehydrated. Their gods give them the water that makes them thirst for more. I wonder if the woman at the well was just like them.
Jesus knows us. He knows that we all desire for something greater. There are thousands of temples and meditation centers here for people who thirst for more. They offer up every religion—every faith—to the people who will come worship under their roofs. And, people come. They come to worship Freud, Buddha and Allah at the same time. And they worship until the day is done. And, they come back the next day to find more truths…to find more water. It’s all about more satisfaction. More peace. More understanding.
As I sit on the roof of our house and talk with Jesus in the morning sun, it’s all becoming more real for me. Jesus is all I have. I have the way He looks at me. I have the way He loves me before I confess my sins. I have the way He dances with me in the late night hours. He is all I have. Because when I claim that I have anything else, my worth lessens.
He is the only one who will ever value me entirely. He is the only one who can completely save me. He is the only one who is worth everything I am.
There are so many other gods out there. Some of them are people, some are old memories and some are the physical things. But, all of them can only offer haunting whispers in the depths of our hearts.
My Jesus never runs out. My Jesus always satisfies. That’s why He is the only way.
Because He is always enough.
