One Geek

I want to say something inspirational tonight. I feel the intense desire to say something genuinely good and not just something intellectual and fake.

I have seen some truly horrible things in the past year. Heard much worse stories. Felt very sad, angry, rejected, lonely and foolish. There is so much crap going on in this world. So much evil and so much injustice. I have felt like crawling into a hole and trying to forget. The odd thing is that I am so not just talking about India. India broke my heart in a way it has never been broken before. Intellectually I knew about the suffering in this world of ours. But I have shied away from truly seeing. In the past often I have averted my gaze when I have got close to seeing suffering. Sometimes I still do. God knows I am still haunted by an image I saw of a baby born with it’s insides out.

In the darkest areas of this life though, in amongst all the suffering there is light. I have seen it, often the light is weak and frail. It seams like it can’t possibly do any good. But it does. That’s the honest to God truth. The light doesn’t yet conqueror all the darkness. That’s for the final days. What joy there will be.

That’s the metaphor for what I am talking about. Now India, the pain there is not hidden like in the West. In fact you’d have to be deaf and blind not too see or hear the agony so many face. The numbers of those suffering from extreme poverty is too staggering to even comprehend. Amongst this suffering I have seen servants working to bring light into the darkness. So frail, a couple of people working trying to help the afflicted. It is almost laughable how under resourced and equipped these people are.

But you know what?

The results would cause you to laugh with joy. Sure they don’t save the world, but they make a real impact in lives. And with time real progress happens. People’s lives are changed for the better. Communities can be and have been transformed. The most hopeless cases fixed.

I’ve meet people who have restored the sight too countless blind people.

I have meet people who work with HIV infected people who have little hope. Doing what they can to help these people and show them love.

I have witness a community respond with great love and compassion for a man on the fringe who poisoned himself. Members of the community took turns to bag(hand pump for respiration) him. Working for an hour each for over 24 hours. Until in the end he died. This community cared for the family.

I’ve meet a surgeon of great humility who prays to God for the healing of his patients. Sometimes the patients are cured by the works of the surgeons hand, sometimes from the hand of God and sometimes they are not. Yet this surgeon still has great faith. He goes into the villages often too help those who can’t get to the hospital. He also supports the few who have become Christian’s and been thrown out of their communities.

I have seen the tireless work of a group trying to educate people on health and teaching literacy.

I’ve meet people working to improve the quality life of disabled people. This in a place where it is a judgement from the gods if your family has any one who is disabled in it.

I have meet a woman who founded a hospital in a rural area where women are very repressed.

I have meet a couple who moved there home closer to work so they could spend more time with their daughter. A father who is over worked doing three peoples job requiring him to spend far to much time away.

I have meet so many wonderful people bring light into this world. These people are tremendously humble. They could easily be mistaken as ordinary people. In fact they are but for one thing. They have the spirit of the living God and it has empowered them to do amazing things.

Which gets me to the most inspirational bit. The God I believe in cares about the suffering in this Earth. He cares about the most remote and unknown places in this world. The places we forget. Jesus is in among those who are suffering helping them. Both through people like the servants I just mentioned and also just in his own power.

The amazing thing I have scene since getting back is how much he is working in Sydney too. Among the people I know. It’s not as visible here. Most of what goes on here is internal but God cares about it.

So I believe in a God who cares about people in places I haven’t even heard of and in places I know very well. In places filled with poor people and places filled with the rich.

How cool is that!

I still don’t understand suffering, or why there is so much. But I know that God cares, and is working against it. For now that’s enough.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2005 at 12:13 am and is filed under India Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.