A Day of Contrasts

The Lord provided a very interesting contrast one day in particular while I was in India. Let me set the stage: The first part of this day the team had the opportunity to visit two Hindu temples in the area… Temples exist on almost every corner and the only difference in them is the god to which they are dedicated (Hinduism supports about 330 million gods), the size of the temple and the degree of “ornateness” (I think I just made that word up but it fits). We saw the sign next to the door detailing the price for each particular type of blessing the worshiper was seeing from the god. We stood in the temple and watched as worshipers rang a bell in the doorway (to wake the god) before entering. We watched as worshipers came and lay down prostrate before the god, plastic and decorated with garland. We saw the gifts/offerings people had bought seeking blessings and/or appeasement from the god.

For me, there was an overwhelming sense of sadness as I saw the deception. We had seen just days before, in a neighboring village, the priests “taking the god for a ride” through the village on a decorated cart dawn by water buffalo. We heard about how periodically the gods are taken out of the temple and bathed in milk. Scripture describes this scene perfectly in Psalms 115: 4-8.

Later that evening, the Lord provided a completely different picture: We had the privilege of attending the early hours of a monthly all night prayer service at the church in Ventrapragada. The service started with worship through singing and through the preached word before moving on to the time of prayer. It was such a beautiful contrast from the picture seen earlier in the day. Believers bowing in prayer before the throne of the living God who never sleeps nor slumbers (Psalms 121:4). So many of these precious saints were found laboring in prayer for the salvation of their families. Through translation the team knew the specific prayer requests of these people and one by one, side by side with these Indian believers we were able to simultaneously approach the throne of God with our petitions. How sweet to know that the one true God, immediately, hears and understands our prayers, in English and in Telugu.

The interesting thing is that we Americans think we are a little more removed from the scenes of temples filled with idols on every corner, in our houses, and in our cars but we really aren’t. Sure, we don’t literally take our gods out for a ride, bathe them in milk, or attempt to literally appease them but really we are no different. We erect idols and temples of a different sort. Our idols are seated on the thrones of our hearts where Christ is the rightful ruler and our idols manifest themselves in the form of our jobs, careers, money, kids, religious appearances, and chiefly, self. As we are frequently reminded at Grace Church, our hearts are indeed “idol factories” and we desperately need a great Savior to step in, purify our hearts, and unite them toward Christ (Psalm 86:11).

Broken Barriers

Once of the most moving experiences was a visit to the “slum” area of Ventrapragada, the village where we spent a good deal of time. This is the portion of the community where the people that are considered “untouchable” or the “lowest of the low” reside. The children of these people are often times denied education, though they live virtually across the street from the school. Though they are beautiful people, their clothes are often tattered and dirty. We heard that many times the only sustenance these people have is rice and often after they cook the rice they reserve the “rice water” for consumption later because it has nutrients that will be beneficial and fill them up.

As we walked in this area and looked at the faces of these people we listened to Vijay tell of the barriers that the gospel was ripping down. These people are in a class all to themselves and usually those of the higher castes do not associate with these “lowest of the low.” About ten years ago, Vijay’s dad who pastors a church in Ventrapragada, began faithfully ministering to these people who are frequently ignored and about three years ago they began seeing the fruit of faithful laboring with the Gospel as some of these people began know Christ. Now, despite barriers that have existed for thousands of years, believers from the higher castes can now be found on a Sunday morning worshiping right next to believers from the lowest castes. The gospel does indeed break down all barriers when we allow it to penetrate every area of our lives.

Two reasons this picture was so valuable to me: One, Memphis just so happens to be a city where years and years of racial barriers have been erected yet the gospel can completely demolish these barriers when our lives are all wrecked by gospel truth. Seeing the broken barriers in this village in India give me much reason to hope and expectantly pray that the Lord will do the same here in Memphis. Two and similarly, we were once “untouchable” because of our sin. An even higher barrier once existed between the holy God and sinful man and yet by Christ’s redeeming work on the cross, he has completely destroyed that barrier. Now believers have freedom to fellowship and worship at the throne, where we once were, by virtue of our sin nature, denied access. Praise God that the gospel does indeed break down the highest of barriers!

Happy Journey!

Normally, one wouldn’t necessarily see the need to devote an entire post to the journey to a particular destination however, the Father’s hand was SO clearly seen in the orchestration of our journey that I think it does necessitate a post of its own. We were supposed to depart Memphis around 8:15ish on an American Airlines flight to Chicago, then to JFK, Brussels, Chennai (India) and then our final destination by flight, Hyderabad. We were set to arrive in Hyderabad, India around 9 am local time and the team that was meeting us in Hyderabad was scheduled to arrive before us around 2 or 3am.

We boarded our first flight from Memphis to Chicago and were seated with carryon luggage stowed and seatbelts fastened, ready to begin the first leg of our journey when the captain came over the PA system asking everyone to unload for about 20 minutes while American Airlines personnel try to fix a potential problem with the plane’s hydraulics (not sure exactly what this is but hey, if they say there is a potential problem I’m more than willing to get off!). 20 minutes turned into a canceled flight and we ended up spending the better part of the day in Memphis trying to reroute 6 passengers on the same flights all the way to India.

The very helpful American Airlines representative was able to eventually book us all a new itinerary that was supposed to depart at 2 pm that afternoon and take us from Memphis to Chicago to JFK to Frankfurt, Germany to Mumbai and finally into Hyderabad. And while we were almost assured our luggage wouldn’t make it to our final destination because the new itinerary had us flying on 4 different airlines, it would in fact get us to Hyderabad before our original itinerary and eliminate an overnight stay in Chennai, India en route to Hyderabad. What a kindness of the Lord!

Our journey seemed to be clicking along just fine as we left the States but when we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany we all received another little reminder that the Lord is indeed the one who orders our steps (Proverbs 16:9). You see, we found that our friendly American Airlines representative had booked our Frankfurt flights for January 4 as opposed to June 4. Talk about an extended layover! Now we were completely at the mercy of our friendly Lufthansa ticketing agents to get all 6 of us out of Germany together sometime in 2010. (Side note: It an odd sort of way it was the Lord's kindness that the tickets were booked for January. If they American Airlines ticketing agent had seen June, itinerary #2 would probably not have worked and we probably would have never made it out of the States.) Thankfully, Lufthansa was able to reroute us (yet again) and accommodate as long as the 6 of us could run through the Frankfurt airport (including another pass through security) and make it to the plane that was currently boarding for Abu Dhabi, UAE. This third itinerary was to take us to Abu Dhabi and then finally to Hyderabad.

Fortunately, that is exactly what happened. We made it to Abu Dhabi fine but discovered there that our bags did not (actually, only my bag made it to Abu Dhabi). We also discovered that only 4 of the 6 of us had flights that continued on to Hyderabad. The friendly Eithad Airways ticketing agent somehow worked a bit of magic and was able to free up 2 additional seats. We all 6 finally boarded the plane to Hyderabad where we arrived literally moments before our team members from North Carolina did and hours before our original itinerary. What a sweet providence of the Lord! Obviously the Lord had alternate travel arrangements for us and on the onset of the trip it was a precious reminder that the Lord was in control. He continued to show us this even in the way that he provided luggage for the rest of the team almost moments before out bus left Hyderabad for the villages. The entire time, unbeknownst to us, the Lord was behind the scenes orchestrating our crazy travel plans in such a way that caused us to feast on the fullness of Christ and rest in his kind providence toward us. In this sense, as the Indians say, it was indeed a “Happy Journey.”

India

As most of you know, last week I returned from India and in an effort to attempt to adequately quantify some of what went on while I was there I thought that I’d write a series of blog posts. I’ve got so much more to say than can really be said in response to the casual, “How was your trip?” Therefore, you (the 2 readers I’m lucky to still have after my sporadic history of blogging) can read a more full account at your leisure. And given my record of saying I’m going to blog about a particular topic and then that blog failing to materialize, I can understand the skepticism of my intent to complete this series. Rest assured dear reader, the series will be completed because I’ve already written the entire series and will be posted selections over the coming days. So, diving in…

Just to set the stage for those who might be unfamiliar, I recently spent 10 days in southeast India where God was so gracious in allowing me to see all that he is doing there. It was such a joy to see the ways the Gospel is spreading and taking root, to see the ways the Gospel is breaking down barriers that have existed for thousands of years, and to see mostly the way God is upholding his promise to make his name great among the nations (Malachi 1:11-14).

On June 3, I left with a team of 5 others from my church en route to Hyderabad, India. Once there, we met up with 2 others from a sister church in Charlotte, North Carolina. From Hyderabad we took a bus southeast 6-7 hours to the village where our local contact, Vijay’s home church is located. We spent the next 10 days in this village, Ventrapragada, and surrounding villages conducting pastor’s conferences (the 2 pastors: Nathan from Grace Church Memphis, and Coty from Desiring God Community Church in Charlotte, NC taught hundreds of Indian pastors), conducting gospel meetings in the villages in the evenings, and working with the precious children from Ventrapragada and the children’s home there which is associated with Vijay’s home church. While the team went to take the gospel and to teach local Indian pastors, I know the group would probably unanimously say that ended up learning far more from them. Hopefully you’ll get just a glimpse of that in through the coming posts….