This month, we’re in Chaing Mai, Thailand working in the red light district. We live on bar street where there are dozens and dozens of bars, strip clubs, and massage parlors. At night, people flock the streets looking for a good time. They watch a boxing match, buy a drink, buy a girl. Another night of vacation well spent.
Bar street is so glamorous. There’s lights, music, games, boxing, beautiful girls everywhere, and the ever popular banana pancakes. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of it all. Even our ministry can sound glamorous. We’re doing bar ministry. Isn’t that what we dream of in the States? Travel to the red light district of a foreign country, go to bars, rescue the girls, throw a lock around the doors of a brothel and proudly proclaim that it’s closed. Job well done.
Let me just break that illusion for you. There is nothing glamorous about bar street. In the morning.
During morning workouts, we run down that very same street. It’s deserted. Bags of trash wait for the garbage man in the same places as girls waited for men the night before. Stray dogs run along the sidewalk where tourist scurried along from bar to bar just six hours earlier. There’s no one around, and instead of music playing, we just hear our feet hitting the pavement and an occasional moto drive by.
The illusion and glamour are gone. It’s just a street. But for some reason, in twelve hours, the illusion comes back. The darkness hides the truth, and night after night the people go searching for something in the darkness. The darkness hides the emptiness. It allures. It beckons. And it works.
I keep thinking about those trash bags. There they are, morning after morning. The evidence of the night before taken away. I think about the women. I think how they must feel in the morning and imagine that it can’t be much different than those bags. Dirty. Forgotten. Alone. Picked over. Rejected.
My heart hurts. It hurts because if a man wants you on these streets it’s so he can use you. If he doesn’t want you, it’s rejection. You’re either used or rejected. Both suck. Both make you wake up empty every morning.
I’ve never experienced this life. And living here for a month, going to bars at night, I still never will. But I’ve felt rejected. Used. Alone. Picked over. Dirty. Haven’t we all? But once it’s in the light, well then the story changes.
Hope comes in the morning. The sun outshines the moon, and mercies are new.
So that’s my job this month. That’s my ministry, to be the light even if it’s 10pm. Go to a bar, make friends, buy a round of diet coke, and get creamed in a game of pool. Also not very glamorous. But it’s the light. And darkness cannot cover The Light.
