Living in vivid colour

Cycling thru India

Some images of the cross from our journey

Give Me Your Eyes

(Remarks I wrote for the March 25 service at Whyte Ridge Baptist Church.  Full service available to download at: http://whyteridgebaptist.ca/resources/sermons/?sermon_id=105 )

Dear brothers and sisters,

I am writing this from sunny Florida in my jet lagged early morning haze, where I am fortunate to be enjoying a vacation and period of rest and recovery with my family. Though I am glad to be here, I am a little sad to be missing this service and time of sharing with my team members.

My experience in West Bengal was not eye-opening in the way I expected it might be, but it did open my mind and my heart in unexpected ways.

In the two Far Corners conferences for women, I taught two lessons – the first on the story of Sarah and Abraham receiving God’s covenant and the second on the story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house.

I opened the first conference sharing about Sarah and relating her story of faith to my own. As many of you know, Anthony and I had two babies before Rachel was born. Jillian lived less than a day and Emily, just 14 days. In  relating the story of God doing what seemed impossible to Sarah, I shared with the women how God did that in my life as I journeyed through the pain of deepest loss, hopelessness and despair back to hope and then to great joy.  Though more than a decade has passed since these events in our lives, it remains heart-wrenching and draining to share this story.

There was some response to the story as I told it but I really didn’t have a sense that I had connected with the women and was, by the end of day 2, feeling a little frustrated with the inability to directly communicate with the women.  I wrote in my journal the morning of March 7 how I was wondering about whether anything I might experience in India could possibly break through the well-fortified emotional walls around my heart that ordinarily allow me to live day to day, though carrying a load of sorrow and grief.

Then God did his work and my heart was opened to the women of India.  At the end of that same day, we spent a time of hearing and praying for the women’s individual prayer requests. Most were requests for healing or good exam results for children or concern for the spiritual health of family members. Shelly, Christine and I were taking turns praying for each request.

About midway through this time, when it was my turn to pray, a young woman stood up and shared how she and her husband longed for a child; they had lost one baby already and were desperately wanting a baby.  Hearing the desires of her heart, which mirrored my own of a decade earlier, broke down all my emotional barriers and opened my heart wide to the pain of my sister in Sumulktala. As I  heard her story, tears streamed down my face and as I prayed for her I wept. Through this young woman, God shared with me a bit of his heart for humanity.

In preparing for this experience and in my early days in India, I frequently played and prayed the song Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath.  The words of the chorus speak so eloquently the desire of my heart for this trip:

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see.

God granted me that request for awhile in India.  My heart was opened wide to the struggles of my Indian sisters and was laid vulnerable before them. For that I am immeasurably grateful.  I echo the words of Psalm 30, at verses 10-12:

10 “Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me;
O LORD, be my helper.”
11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness,
12 That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

Thank you all for your prayerful support to me.  God has worked in me and through me in West Bengal. I have is many more stories of how He did that, and of my experience more generally and I would love to share those with you on my return, so please ask!

Pictures (finally!)

It appears to be beyond me to post a large number of photos here, and I’m really not able to edit down this amazing experience to just a handful.  So, I’ve posted some 200+ on Facebook, and whether you’re a “friend” on Facebook or not, and even if you have never visited Facebook before, you can view my album by clicking this link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150627150201456.384209.640761455&type=3&l=2739a76719 

Hope you enjoy the pictures.  I’m sure you’ll get a sense of just why I so very much loved my time in West Bengal.