Isaiah 55:10-11
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and
flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is
my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will
accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.�
Yesterday was a very
difficult day for many on our team as we made hospital visits in the leprosy
colony. Only two visits into our morning,
we encountered a 95-year-old woman who was literally nothing but skin and
bones. She could not hear and I’m
not sure how well she was able to see.
She was sitting with her legs crossed and a little bit drawn up towards
her. She kept rubbing one of her
hands against the rubber mattress (because for some reason there were not
sheets). As we walked into her
cubicle she didn’t even respond, but instead continued to rub her hand. As our translator tried to get her
attention, the lady in the next cubicle explained that she could only
understand when it was time to eat and sleep. As we watched this lady for a few moments the weight of what
was going on began to hit us. A
couple from our team had to go outside to regain composure.
As the nurse came to
feed this woman her dinner and we saw that she was being taken care of, we went
to the next r
ow of patients. We
met two women who “lived� across from each other and who apparently had been
there for a number of years. They
were sitting on the floor chatting and eating dinner. They invited us to sit with them, so we did. We all sat and talked to them for a few
minutes. One of the women shared
that she was so thankful that we had come to visit her because most people were
scared of people with leprosy. She
also shared that she was just waiting for her “next life� (she is Buddhist) so
that hopefully she would not have this disease. The other woman said she was just waiting to die because she’d
been in that hospital for something like 14 years. (It was at this moment that I was so glad that God had
allowed me to hold it together with the 95 year old woman and not have to walk
outside, because He gave me wonderful words of hope to give to these women in
this time on the floor.)
I told them, “In the
Bible it talks a lot about people with leprosy. Jesus loved them and healed many of them when they had faith
that He could do so. I don’t know
if He will completely restore you from this disease, but I do know that He can
heal and restore your heart. Just like
Jesus loved the lepers in the Bible, we love you.� I also told the one lady that maybe she thought that having
anot
her life without leprosy would be great, but if she would trust in Christ…Heaven
is infinitely better than another life would be. There would still be pain, sin, and disease in this world…even
in her “next life.� (Actually at
some point on of the Thai women that is working with us began trying to explain
the first part of what I said further and as the other translator explained
what she was saying, I realized that God had taken over and it was exactly what
I was wanting to say…only leaving out the translation from English to Thai!)
It was such a great
conversation, and tears were shed by the women, as well as by our team. Neither of them accepted Christ then,
but I know that God is moving in that place and He is pursuing those two
women. Pray for them.
(Also, as we were
talking to these two women on the floor, the others who had needed a moments to
cry over the 95 yr old came back to her bedside and prayed for her. As one of my teammates put her hand on
this woman’s head, she kind of laid down and leaned into her touch. We can’t know for sure, because she
didn’t say anything…but we think something really incredible and spiritual was
going on during this prayer and this long awaited touch from another human
being.)
