This month we’re talking about the power of community.
When she spent a weekend with a Thai Hill Tribe, 2015 Gap D Racer Jen Selby experienced the truth that community is even more powerful than oppression.
Nestled between the bordering mountains of Thailand and Burma lies a small Karen tribal village.
I remember stepping out of the van and into the village and sensing a deep spirit of oppression, as if the atmosphere harbored prisoners.
Our ministry contact later explained that the Karen people have a dark history of oppression under the Burmese government. For centuries, they have been denied their basic human rights and regarded as a lesser people in society.
At one point, the Karens requested liberty as their own individual state, separate from Burma, but their plea was rejected, and instead, they again fell victim to violence and oppression. To this day, the Karens live under no protection from any law and are forced to find survival within their own communities.
We were there to attend a biannual gathering for the surrounding Christian Karen communities. In addition to living with these beautiful people and sharing meals with them, we also attended multiple church services.
Isolation from their country has strengthened their inner community. They share everything they have and even help each other in household chores, viewing their people group as family.
The families we stayed with completely moved out of their homes for our team to stay, and they did so joyfully. Our meals consisted of the entire village sitting around a long table gathering together. They truly lived a lifestyle of generosity.
During church the freedom cry of an oppressed people rose up. As the choir sang, the melodies and harmonies joined together, creating a new language that didn’t need to be understood to be felt.
It didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language; I didn’t need to understand the words they prayed to know we were worshipping the same God.
In fact, despite the almost physical burden I felt in the village, I realized I felt something even more powerful.
Everyone we met in the village, at the tribal gatherings, and even at family meals had to lean on God for everything. They may be oppressed by their government, but they are strong. They know they are not forgotten by God.
In that moment, I saw that oppression does not equal “broken”. Abandonment by the government of man does not negate joy. A freedom cry is a song of praise.
And the Karen people, in important ways, are truly free.
I’ve never had to look oppression in the face and identify it for what it was in such a magnanimous way until I walked into that village. Now the Karen no longer belong to a statistic to me. Their lives are intricate stories, written by the same father who liberated me from my chains.
I’ll never forget the weekend I spent with them. Coming as I do from a country founded on freedom, living and breathing with an oppressed people moved me in a way I struggle to describe. I felt humbled, burdened, and forever changed.
I wrestled with God. The raw oppression was too much. How could the world continue moving day by day, when so many people are oblivious to real social injustice?
Then God reminded me that he cares for justice even more than I do and that they are free in the ways that truly matter.
He has already won this battle for the Karen people.
I can no longer think of the Karen tribe as an oppressed people. Because while I can’t understand what it is to live under the chains of oppression, they are as free as I am, under the one true King.
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Is God calling you to share physical and spiritual freedom with oppressed people throughout the world? Click HERE to find out how you could go on the World Race in 2016!
