Prayer for Alice

Today, instead of our usual thoughts, I need to ask you to remember Alice in prayer. God has been accomplishing some great things here for His glory. Then three days ago Alice began feeling down, but we thought she still hadn't adjusted from the trip. Today, after a a poor night's sleep she woke up in a great deal of pain. A doctor has been here twice and she is now resting. Please pray for healing and rest, and that satan will not sidetrack us from God's purpose. Thank you, and God bless.

Yesterday I touched a leper.  Not just touched--which I selfishly and fiercely avoided in the past--but I hugged and wept and prayed with them.

My hands were on their bowed heads, on numb and failing feet, on gnarled stumps of hands that cannot even dress some of them.  They sat there with primitive crutches and grubby artificial legs, eyes blinded by deadened blinking reflex, noses rotting away in withered faces.  Some in their sixties had the disease since they were 8 or ten years old.  Outcastes in the midst of the crowds of India.

Unclean!  Unclean! echoing down through the ages.   Shunned by a society where extended family is the supporting fabric of life.  Refused access to water--in a hot and tropical land--lest their touch on the pump "pollute" the entire well.

We gave out 10 lb bags of rice, some spending money, and little plastic bags of water.  The water packets were torn open greedily, thirsty throats gratefully slaked.  Water!  Johnpaul told them that Jesus was the Water of Life....then Russ spoke to them from Psalm 31, teaching them that God is with them even in their struggle and pain.  Fingerless hands raised as "Allelujah" rose to the heavens.

Matthew 8:3 has a new meaning for me today.  When Jesus touched the leper to heal him, it may have been the first human touch he had felt for years. When I knelt down to pray for Susilla's numb feet--and touched them--she burst into tears.  When I rose and took her stumpy hands in mine, I couldn't stop myself from embracing her frail and shaking body to my heart.

God uses the unlikely--and sometimes unwilling--to do His work.  He uses the weak, the poor, the fearful to show His power.  And, He brings the outcastes--all of us crippled, maimed and blinded by sin--into the Marriage Banquet of His glorious Son.  Praise God!  Daivuniki stotrum!

O India, India, you who worship a million gods and yet do not know the One who created you!

A few have found the Way...but culture and tradition stifle the path.  There is a huge festival underway, honoring a goddess who rides the tiger.  Everyone, it seems, is flocking to temples to be blessed.  Some enterprising devotees have brought the blessing to your doorstep with a lavishly decorated rickshaw containing two idols, draped in beautiful clothing and flower garlands.  A loudspeaker played praise chants as the young man pushed it down our street, while his companion in a sparkly sari went from door to door asking alms.  Everywhere colored lights look like Christmas in the USA, men have their foreheads painted in worshipful designs, and even a little white dog came by our gate with a blessing mark.

But as in the days of the Bible (which rural India reminds us of) God has called a remnant to Himself.  Last night we had the great privilege to participate in a combination housewarming/birthday ceremony.  A matriarch had been willing to risk her place in Hindu society to follow Christ.  Her grey hair and elegant sari presided over three generations of extended family filling a muddy courtyard in plastic lawn chairs.

The eldest son and daughter follow Jesus now with their families; in fact the eldest son is a pillar of Brother Isaac's church and his yokefellow in ministry.  The youngest son's birthday also celebrated his recent second birth into the eternal family.  Keyboards played, drums beat, and a flute piped pure haunting India into the night.  Russ encouraged them from The Word, and there were many prayers said:  for the home, for a new pregnancy, for two shy little grandsons, for the new clothes being gifted to the college student son.  Brother Isaac led the ceremony and translated for us.  After a long ride home through the ricefields, we realized that God is the Lord in every corner of His world.  May the nations glorify Your Name, O Lord, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the One True God.

Ahhh India....

3AM  Peace and comparative silence at last...the traffic and thunderstorms and voices have quieted.  Only the scuff of a lone man's sandals on the concrete street, a rickshaw stoically pedaling in from a distant village,  the whistle of a passing train, then a cock deciding it must be morning.  I fall back asleep, my body slowly adjusting to the rhythm of the other side of the world.

4AM  Traffic picking up, autorickshaws adding noise and fumes to the graying light, pedestrians streaming in to the town, crows feuding in the coconut palms, little striped squirrels scolding, the smoke of cooking fires adding to the haze.

5:30-6AM The noise tells us morning has arrived.  Motorbikes, goods carriers, bicycles join all the other conveyances in profusion, each with its own warning sounds--bells, clappers, tinny horns which each driver seems compelled to use when overtaking other traffic.  Some autorickshaws have added sound systems...plus the muzzeins calling over loudspeakers, and Hindu temple chants broadcast to the crowds.  The decibel level is approaching deafening.  A buffalo wanders through the chaos, mooing softly on its way into an alley.  The sun rises hot and red above the housetops.  Tuesday officially arrives in south India.

O Lord God, please let Your Voice be heard above the noise of life, and open hearts to You.  Use us to glorify Your Name in this part of Your world.  Be with us as we go out and touch lives today for Essu Kristu, our Lord.  

Well we are here!  India lo unnamu...at long last.  2 hours from OKC to Chicago, 2 1/2 hrs in Chicago, 7 hours to London, six hours IN London attempting to rest (great organic sandwiches/horribly uncomfortable chairs), 9 hours to Hyderabad, quickly through customs, and a final grueling 7 hours in a Jeeplike taxi to Tenali.  India, India, India, a study in contrasts.

A huge billboard in Hyderabad marketing "the newest address" of luxury apartments, yet a few blocks away the poor hunker down in the dirt among their blue-tarp/cardboard tents.  The second largest producer of tractors in the world, yet men still plowing with bullocks (remember Elisha?)  The traffic between Hyderabad and Tenali was a mix across the millenia:  Huge interstate tractor trailers and crawling autorickshaws; brawny goods-carriers trucks, overloaded with rice, decorated with slogans and gods and tinsel tassels being passed by impatient taxis, private cars and tons of motorbikes--many with a sari-clad lady gracefully balanced across the back seat while they zoom in and out of the chaos; "super deluxe" buses dodging herds of goats and buffalo being driven to greener pastures, their keepers in loincloths and dusty saris, squinting at the 21st century AD rushing past the 21st century before Christ.

The noise, serenity, beauty, dirt, poverty and wealth, all part of an incredible mosaic that is impossible to unravel in a lifetime, but enchanting the heart into a love for this land and its people.  Even though He is seldom recognized here, this is part of our Father's world, and He delights in His creation.  Please pray that the people He created will recognize the heart of their Creator through the love and mercy of Jesus.