A Hard Day

Every day begins with the anticipation of what situation God might use to reveal Himself through. Most days at the end of the day I have some new happening to ponder and a sense of joy from seeing positive change in people’s lives. Those are the days I love to share stories about with you!

Unfortunately, today wasn’t a day that ended that way. Today was one of those days I don’t like to talk much about, but one of those days that does happen often in our work in Cambodia. I will break the golden rules of blogging here and post more than 600 words and show no pictures, but if you really want to share what life is like in Cambodia with me you’ll take a few minutes to read this through.

As always I started my day with great anticipation. We were going to one of my favorite areas in Takeo province. Takeo is beautiful and the people there have worked hard to develop their villages, churches are growing, and people are very friendly and open. When we first arrived at the pastor’s house I could immediately recognize the sound of a Buddhist monk’s funeral chant a few houses away. We asked what happened and the pastor told us a man had fallen from a tree picking coconuts and died a couple of days before. This was sad, but it wasn’t someone we knew so there was a sense of distance from it. We asked the pastor how we could help today and she asked if we could visit the sick with her.

Our first visit was to Serey Mum. Serey Mum was a young lady in her 20’s. We had to climb up into her one room stilted bamboo home to visit with her. She shared her story as she lay on a mat on the floor. Two months earlier she had been climbing a tree picking coconuts in her front yard when she fell. The 15 to 20 foot fall had left her with no feeling or ability to move from the waist down. Her family did not have the money to purchase transportation to the nearest hospital 200 km away. While we sat there with Serey Mum her daughter, who looked to be about 8 years old, fed her small bits of food and fanned her to keep her cool. This humble bamboo one room home had no running water or electricity. While this whole situation was difficult enough to process I soon began to notice Serey Mum was coughing often. I knew enough from Tricia’s nursing stories to know laying on her back all this time was allowing pneumonia to set into her lungs. I began to get upset when I realized for a coconut, worth 37 cents, Serey Mum had been paralyzed and was lying here in a very desperate situation.

Many people will ask at this point why we didn’t do something. Remember I said these days happen too often, but I don’t like to talk about them. We carry benevolence funds with us for just these type of situations. We gave Serey Mum and her family enough money that day to provide transportation and a medical exam, but we all knew she would likely tell her husband to use the money for food and clothing for the children and family instead of for her personal needs. There are some things the Western mind cannot understand.

As we continued to visit with her the small home began to fill with villagers. Before we knew it the room was filled with 10-12 adults listening to us encourage Serey Mum with the Word of God. We had a full room of people who were hungry to hear more about the God we were sharing about. During that time two of the local pagoda leaders joined in the conversation. As we shared the gospel, they began to try to show us the good they had done by sharing a small notebook that showed the record of alms they had collected from villagers to give to the poor. These men were touched by the Word of God, but when others decided to respond to the Gospel they said their own righteousness, proven by their alms collections, was enough.

I could try to turn this story into a bright and cheerful one by sharing that two people made decisions for Christ that day, by sharing that Serey Mum was a Christian who knew Christ and was ready to meet Him. Somehow, though I could rejoice, it did not bring joy to me that day. I won’t try to discuss the theology, but on this day I think for a moment I understood John 11:35. We see in this story Jesus, knowing Lazarus would rise again, was still touched as a man by his friends’ death.  I think on this day I might have understood why “Jesus wept”.

We prayed for Serey Mum, believing in a God who does the miraculous, without seeing a change. We also went on that day praying for an elderly lady who went to a traditional medicine man for an eye infection and was now blind in one eye and had a worse infection. Again we prayed for a man with a lung infection and blood pressure problems. I have seen God do some miraculous things during my time here in Cambodia, but today was not one of those days.  Today was a day where my heart and life, and the life of Serey Mum, was caught in the tension between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. This place of tension often makes many days difficult, but this one was a particularly hard day. My heart was deeply saddened, and though it was a hard day, at least I can say it was not a bad day.

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.” Psalms 118:24