“Quick Nikki, hurry get your phone out”
As I reached into my pocket, I looked back at my teammate, who was a few steps behind me. She motioned towards a young, Cambodian girl who was standing among the chaos of some sort of a worship service that we had stumbled onto during our prayer walk around a Buddhist temple in Phenom Phen.
Cambodia is a country wrapped up in Buddhism. Sprit houses, statues of gods, and offerings line the streets and are at the corner of every shop, home and temple. My team and I spent that morning prayer walking around the main temple in Cambodia’s capital. Prayer walking around temples, is nothing new on the race. We simply walk around the area, interceding for those we see, the country, and anything else that God puts on our minds. To see people offer their daily savings and sacrifices to a stone cold idol, isn’t a ‘new’ site for me anymore. In fact, it has become ‘normal’ for me to see. South East Asia is full of different religions, with different gods.
Around us, people were shouting, pushing and offering what they had, up to their gods. They were throwing slabs (yes slabs) of RAW meat onto the statues heads. Flies swarmed the place and the people’s cries of prayers, were lost among the crowd. Our noses picked up the smells of raw meat, spices, cut fruit and sweat. The distinct aroma of burning incense, made our eyes tear up and our throats burn as though they were on fire. Instantly, they became raw. Fears of literally being burnt, by a passing incense stick, was no joke. Our feet attempted to maneuver our bodies through the crowds, careful not to step on the candles burning by our feet.
This was hardly a place for a young girl to be at.
She couldn’t have been more than 6, maybe 7, years old. Yet, as I hurried to get my phone out, my eyes locked eyes with her. For that split second, it was like time had stopped. The chaos around me became still and the only thing that mattered in this world, was that girl.
She had captivated me.
As I looked into her eyes, I realized that God was allowing me to see a part of her world. The look on her face, was cold. It was cold like the statue I had seen moments earlier. Her expression, was somber. There was no emotion behind it. If looks could kill, I’d be dead. It was an icy stare.
It was a warning.
A warning to ‘back off’ and to ‘leave this place’.
Up until that point, I hadn’t experienced (or felt) the evil in Cambodia, until that very moment.
And it was intense.
It was Evil.
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However, the story doesn’t end there.
At the end of the day, as I was looking over the pictures from the day, I came across the shot of this little girl. My team mate, pointed out the single tear coming off the girls face.
In the chaos of the service, this little girl, shed a tear.
JESUS.
As I looked closer at the photo, as I looked into her eyes again, I noticed something that I didn’t see before. I saw Jesus looking back at me, through this girl. I saw Him in her eyes. I saw Him in the single tear that rolled down her cheek. It was the look that I had seen many times before on this trip. In the eyes of the kids at camp in Albania, to my girl Wendy in India, Lydia and her family in Serbia, gypsy kids dancing in the streets in Romania, to the school teachers in Nepal and Cambodia, to the trapped women down on Bangla road in Thailand.
Jesus came to this earth to speak life. Jesus came to earth to GIVE life.
I do not know the story of this young girl who captivated me for those split seconds…but what I do know, is that those split seconds, changed me.
How, I honestly don’t know, but I will search and I know that I will find.
In those moments, Jesus gave me His eyes, as a reminder that He came to this earth. To live. TO DIE. TO bring joy. Hope. Freedom. Salvation for ALL NATIONS.
God Bless,
GO Bless
