back to india...
I wrote this in my journal on one of the last days of our trip:
Driving through Bangalore today, I felt the familiar twinge of fear that somehow the Lord would want me to live here for the rest of my life. In my mind, I started going through the conditions that I would deem necessary for me to survive and be happy, or at least okay. We passed a rickshaw driver changing a tire and I thought about that being my life and being hot all the time and having bad days and going home to a cramped house (or shack) with spicy food and rats and demons. I thought about how I sometimes think that I have a tough life and how naive I am because in Bangalore there are thousands of girls who sleep on the streets or with men who try to poison their beauty and they still keep going, day after day.
This trip has been so odd because I thought I would be hit with a huge wave of grief or sadness for these people and this country, but instead it’s been a small series of revelations that are almost (dare I say?) practical, thought-changing, habit-altering, comfort-jarring realizations about my life and the way I see God and how off I have been; not in the sense that I have been completely wrong, but that I have only scratched the surface of the reality of a world that’s both physical and spiritual, frightening and unfair and unjust and comforting and beautiful and larger than my perspective will ever be and most significantly, ruled by laws and principalities beyond my comprehension and over which only Jesus is sovereign.
And I need to be okay with that.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we see and the things we can’t see- kings, kingdoms, rulers and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.
-Colossians 1:15-17
Today (11/29/06)
I am reading City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre and it is bringing my heart and mind back to India. I find myself being saddened and enraged by some of the stories and by my own self for forgetting what I saw and felt while I was there. I keep coming back to this issue of God’s sovereignty. No matter how I feel (or don’t feel) about India, the fact remains that it is under and within and completely wrapped up in the reign and rule of Jesus. Yes, there is work to be done and I want to be a part of that. But what I am learning is that it is done. He has gone before. His heart is there and it’s up to me to go and seek it out.
Driving through Bangalore today, I felt the familiar twinge of fear that somehow the Lord would want me to live here for the rest of my life. In my mind, I started going through the conditions that I would deem necessary for me to survive and be happy, or at least okay. We passed a rickshaw driver changing a tire and I thought about that being my life and being hot all the time and having bad days and going home to a cramped house (or shack) with spicy food and rats and demons. I thought about how I sometimes think that I have a tough life and how naive I am because in Bangalore there are thousands of girls who sleep on the streets or with men who try to poison their beauty and they still keep going, day after day.
This trip has been so odd because I thought I would be hit with a huge wave of grief or sadness for these people and this country, but instead it’s been a small series of revelations that are almost (dare I say?) practical, thought-changing, habit-altering, comfort-jarring realizations about my life and the way I see God and how off I have been; not in the sense that I have been completely wrong, but that I have only scratched the surface of the reality of a world that’s both physical and spiritual, frightening and unfair and unjust and comforting and beautiful and larger than my perspective will ever be and most significantly, ruled by laws and principalities beyond my comprehension and over which only Jesus is sovereign.
And I need to be okay with that.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we see and the things we can’t see- kings, kingdoms, rulers and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.
-Colossians 1:15-17
Today (11/29/06)
I am reading City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre and it is bringing my heart and mind back to India. I find myself being saddened and enraged by some of the stories and by my own self for forgetting what I saw and felt while I was there. I keep coming back to this issue of God’s sovereignty. No matter how I feel (or don’t feel) about India, the fact remains that it is under and within and completely wrapped up in the reign and rule of Jesus. Yes, there is work to be done and I want to be a part of that. But what I am learning is that it is done. He has gone before. His heart is there and it’s up to me to go and seek it out.