South Asia —
*The author wrote this piece while serving with ABWE missionaries in South Asia.
The weather was beautiful as it always is during the dry season. It was warm but not hot or humid. There was not a cloud in the sky, although a little haze hung over the rice paddies.
I sat on a park bench on the edge of the bluff that the compound was built on. Down the hill there was a rice paddy and on the other side a smaller bluff topped by a mud hut homestead. To my right lay the river. The tide was high and a sampan laden with fish traps was being paddled down the water. As far as my eyes could see there were rice paddies and prawn ponds separated by goat paths and dotted by a few trees and mud huts. A refreshing briny breeze wafted its way to me.
To my left a little boy, maybe six years old, stands at the barbed wire topped fence. He is wearing a white undershirt that is brown with neglect and red shorts that may have never been washed. His fingers grip the chain links as he stares at the home that *Debbie and *Sara live in. I glance over in his direction but his eyes are fixed on the home of the white women. We are only separated by about fifteen yards but in reality we are still eleven time zones apart.
What is he thinking as he gazes at the home? “Who are these pale skinned blond haired people? What strange land did they come from? It must be a wonderful place to produce such wealth. Why do such odd sounds come out of their mouths? Even when they speak my language they never seem to speak it quite right.”
Does this boy realize that we have come to serve his people? In spite of our seeming wealth does he know the great sacrifices that all have made to come to him? Can he comprehend that all have forsaken houses, lands, families and even their health for the sake of the Gospel and his people? Does he even realize that people who have spent their lives eating clean food, drinking pure water and using sanitary practices in Northern latitudes find it very difficult to withstand the heat and humidity, the food and the water and the diseases they carry in the tropics? Does he know that if we try to live as he and his neighbors do we will die early deaths and not be able to serve him anymore? Has he heard how many have returned home with broken bodies because of their service to his people? As he stares at the house does he notice the hated cross that stands between him and the veranda? Does he know that cross marks the grave of a man who gave his life to present the Good News to his people? Has anyone ever told him that the westerners on this compound have no desire to grow wealthy from his village but only to love them and serve them as Jesus has loved and served the world?
Will this little boy ever realize that even though he and I are very different on the outside we are very much alike on the inside? We both hunger and thirst are fearful and brave. We love and are loved, we seek shelter and security and we both have had moments of success and failure although at my advanced age I have seen far more than he. Most of all we both have a God size hole in our hearts that we long to fill. Sin gnaws on our hearts and causes misery for us both. Will the day ever come that he will realize God sent his Son to pay for the sin that mars our souls and our personal cultures? Will he ever know that the sacrifices of these white people are very imperfect reflections of the sacrifices of Jesus who gave up infinitely more to pay for the sins of the whole world and not merely the Westerner?
The spell is broken now. The tide is receding and the dhows await a new high tide to carry them to the sea. The boy has left when I did not notice. How many little boys have slipped into eternity when we were not noticing?
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