The old lady

On a walk around the province, we passed by so many tanned faces, people wearing hats and jackets to block the sun from browning them.  You can spot a foreigner most times because they wear shorts and tank tops or short sleeved shirts.  In hot weather like this you would think that'd be common attire, but beauty is all about being light skinned here; that and some others believe that if you cover your skin from the Sun's rays then it feels less hot.  I just can't grasp wearing a turtle neck long sleeved silk shirt in 108 degree boiling humidity.  Cultural opinions.

I walk in grace, God's grace, I walk in an atmosphere rich in His grace.  

My team of two and I came across an old woman.  Her two teeth were jagged, and the gums where teeth used to be were like open sores and bleeding.  She sat as if squatting with her bony legs protruding in front of her, but I noticed she was actually sitting on a shovel, or some sort of metal pipe with a small scoop at the end.  The sun was beating down on us, but in my heart it just felt right to stop and share the gospel with her.  She was an old lady, she was not very pleasant to look at, and she was stooped low by her shack of rusted tin walls near a running sewage.  It smelled, and her teeth frightened me.  But I was compelled to stop and give her attention.  We began talking to her and she had never heard of Jesus.  She told us how she went to the temple across the road, built of stone, and every so often would sacrifice a chicken or small animal on the altar.  Clearly there was no relationship in that custom, it was just a custom.  

We asked her what she thought was going to happen when she died.  She said she didn't know, and my cambodian brother began telling her about a God who had a plan from the day He created us to have us with Him for eternity, to bring us to heaven.  

As he was talking to her (in Khmer) I couldn't stop looking at her teeth.  They were so gross.  She had a jagged tooth dangling in the front that made her look kind of sinister.  I thought of the witch from Snow White.  

Then I began to ask God: 

"Do You love her too, the way You love me?  Do you desire so strongly to have her with You for eternity?  Does she matter to You?" 

Because she does not seem to matter to me.  I mean I stopped for her and I was the one to tell my teammates that we should share the gospel with her, but as I looked at her I did not want to go too close to her.  I didn't want to be in the sun.  I wondered if the time would pass by quickly.

Another part of me was warring for her, though.  Another part of me stooped low to level with her squatting position, despite the pain and stiffness in caused in my knees. I wanted to tell her that Jesus loved her, and I wanted to view her the way God viewed her.  A part of me endured in the sun for a long time, as sweat poured down my face and back, I just kept my eyes on her.  

I started conversing with God, through inner prayer, and told God that I wanted to see this woman give her life to Him.  I wanted her to literally say the words "I want to believe in Jesus".  I wanted this so badly, so much so that I began to poke at God.  I began telling Him that I believed Him when His word said that He loved us.  That He especially loved the poor in spirit, the poor, and the widows.  (I didn't know if she was a widow, but with all that happened during the Khmer Rouge it was highly likely.). But I was getting weak, spiritually, I was drained from thinking about her, and praying for her.  I felt my faith trembling as I tried to work out why God would not save her this day.  I wondered why He wouldn't just open up her heart to receive Him.  I wanted to know for certain that God loved her, crazy bloody teeth and all.  I wanted so badly to know that God saw her, and that He wanted her with the same passion He wanted me.  It burned in me to wonder if God loved the unseen elderly.  Wasn't she still a soul to be brought into eternity?  She seemed to have very little in life to live for.  When we found her she was just sitting by the side of the road picking at the clumps of mud on the ground. 

And there I was.  A girl from California, in about 2 months I would be back home, driving my hybrid, eating organically clean food, sleeping on a temperpedic mattress, laughing with friends over soy lattes, and going to a nice air-conditioned church praising God.  People would tell me I looked pretty in my brand new clothes, $80 heels, and perfect skin.  My make up would be on, my hair done, and I'd smell like jasmine and vanilla.  And I know for certain that I would not remember this old lady in preh vihear.  I would be all about me.  I'd be all about the next event or relationship that would makes happy.  I'd feel clean and happy, I'd feel good about myself, and I would know that God loves me, because look at me!  I've got all this good stuff!  

But staring at the old lady with sores in her mouth, I questioned if God really loved her.  She was nothing like me! 

 As I began recalling what the bible said it made so much more sense that God loved her.  And at the time I remember just praying for God to show me, for the sake of my faith, that He wanted her like the bible said.  I wanted to hear her renounce the temple she uselessly went to, I wanted her to be so intrigued and drawn to the gospel my friend was sharing with her that we would have a moment of asking her if she wanted Jesus to come into her heart, and she would say yes, emphatically.  And we would pray for her, and ....and then maybe tell her about the local church and have them take care of the rest.  Because I didn't really care about her.  I just wanted to see a conversion.  I wanted to speak and see change.  

Looking back, even my evangelism was about me.  My view of God's love was so superficial.  I keep thinking God will only love me if I'm clean, if I'm put together and if I myself feel happy and comfortable and deserving.  But Gods word never says that.  If that were so then God is a small God, because more than half the world does not have all the things I have.  There are thousands of villages, slums, and tribal groups that I would view as wretched and dirty because they eat food with worms, have bloody gums, or sleep in rusted tin shacks.  What about them?  Were they not also made by God's very own hands as well?  Did Jesus only die for the first class citizens?  Definitely not!  So why, when I dig through my mentality, do I find that to be something I believe in (by my actions).  Where is my compassion?

Why do I not passionately want to bring her to Jesus?  Why is it always about me?  Or why is it that only a very small and quiet part of me fights for her soul?  

And right now I am aware that God is bigger than my comfortable life back in the states.  That He sees the lowly, and He loves them, and it's why His desire is that His children obey Him when He says to go into all the world and tell people about Him.  He asks us because He loves us.  He asks me to be His representative by loving the lady with scary teeth, because her physical externalities are here today and gone tomorrow.  Eternity does not carry the burden of our physical bodies.  Eternity raises the soul, while the body decays and turns back to dust.  What I see is not what is seen by God.  I see a poor village lady, God sees a perfect soul that He made and that He sent His Son to die for.  I see a life full of nice things back home, but God reminds me that this life will pass away so fast, but souls are eternal.  

He is showing me a little more of Himself as I struggle with all the heat and bugs and dirtiness, I can do little but press into Him, question Him, and ask Him for help in this place.  

It is not about me.  I am not God.  And I am so worn out from that very disconnect in my mind and life.  

I throw off this blanket of apathy.

It's too hot for blankets here.  I just want God to show me Himself. 

 I want to see God.

I want to have His power in me to do what He wants (serving others, walking in the sun, teaching the bible)

I want to hear His voice more clearly.

I want the real thing, the intimate understanding, to know that God is with me, to know God, and know that He knows me.

I want to love the old lady, because God loves her.  (And because one day I'll be an old lady too, and I hope someone will still love me at that time).

(By the way, the old lady began to agree with what my friend was sharing, but we ran out of chatting time and so plan to visit her again soon to continue what God began.)

Quick update:  

We just got back from another village where I sat and sang with the kids and prayed for a lady with an open wound breast cancer.  I wasn't even grossed out.  That's awesome.  God is with me.