The Only Seeing Eyes

Guest post today from our daughter...

 

It's been more than two weeks now since I returned from Cambodia.  It's surreal to realize that I've been halfway across the world and now I'm back.  I feel as if I’ve internalized more since I've been home than I did while I was there.  While we were there things were busy, we were driving, stopping in villages, carrying on conversations, joking about Cambodian customs, trying weird food, etc.  It was a new, entirely different place that I was experiencing for the first time, and there wasn’t much opportunity for peace and quiet till the last day. 

Busyness makes it hard to focus, hard to be quiet in my soul--hard to live in an attitude of worship, and it didn't help that with the time change and the early departure times each morning I didn't do my Bible reading or have my prayer time for the first couple days.  Well, I’ve learned my lesson--God’s Word is the only seeing eyes, and time with Him, in the presence of my King is the only way to stay fully awake every minute of every day, to be an open channel to His grace that changes me. 

I want to be changed, I want this sick, weak mind of mine to be conformed to His, I want my boundaries to be broken so that I can love like He has loved me, see the beauty in others that He sees, so that I can be awakened to this world as it really is.  There's so much we ignore on a daily basis, so much we walk right by without a thought.  I do it all the time.  But we are the minority on this globe. 

That is one thing I was struck by while I was over there: this poverty all around me, this limited life—this is how most of the world lives.  And maybe we are the ones limited, maybe we're the ones in the bubble, and across the world are men being tortured and imprisoned, mothers who struggle to feed their children and go hungry themselves, monks who live the lie of a false religion and never dream of a God who walked their earth and died for them. 

Somehow I think it is more likely that Jesus walked streets like those in Cambodia, rather than Seattle streets, and I’ve always known that, but it didn’t sink in till I went across the world.  Anyhow, Cambodia fits the picture the Bible paints more accurately than any place I've ever been--there's dust, grimy children, poor widows, and great faith.  There's all the rawness of life exposed unapologetically, out in the open for all to see, like the woman with the tumor on her arm.  They know they’re poor, they live with the realities of poverty every day, and this is how people approach a doctor, acknowledging their need, their lack of means or ability of any sort.

Yes, this is right, and Jesus earthly ministry makes more sense after being in Cambodia.  I think it is because I can see these people thronging.  Can you see Americans thronging to hear Jesus?  I can see people coming to Him to heal them--because they have no doctors.  I can see a father pleading for the life of his child, because she is half his life—and because he has no money.  I can see a crowd of children collecting around this Man--because technology has not twisted their view of relationship, and He holds out the highest, most fulfilling relationship any of them have ever dreamed of; they actually care about relationships, these children.

In America we care too much about what other people think to throng; we are afraid to acknowledge our neediness by going to Someone who can help us.  We are consumed with what we will eat, what we will drink, and what we will wear, and we of all people have the least need to be worrying about these things.  We are the most infected people because pride is the most invasive of all diseases, and it hardens the heart-arteries.   

Life is real in a place like Cambodia.  It’s not inhibited by expectations of things we think we deserve, of who we think we are.  It’s a place where people are the centerpiece, because nothing else is worth much. 

Oh that we would begin to see things through this lens—not rejecting the blessings our good God has provided, but seeing past them to His face.  Because it’s only when we live in an attitude of worship, when we are moved by His Spirit and abandoned to His will, that we ever place enough stock in people.  As C.S. Lewis wrote in his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, “There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

SLS

April 18, 2013