(January 22, 2010 journal entry)
we are on the train going to chandagar. the scenery is astonishing – garbage heap after garbage heap. my stomach is turning and at one point i almost throw up. pigs, dogs, people, children. eating, sorting squatting, staring… it is perhaps the most shocking thing i have ever seen. my eyes are welling with tears. i don’t know what to think about anything. i sip my tea and eat my biscuits that i received because i am traveling first class. i eat and stare through the glass window that separates me from them. pigs are mating next to children picking through garbage. bare bums are seen everywhere as people defecate. one boy washes himself with dirty water. the stream we pass is polluted with a thick layer of scum on the top, as if someone has cooked bacon and left the grease to sit for awhile. there are small fires scattered throughout the garbage heaps – these are burning to keep people warm. dirty laundry is hanging to dry in the polluted air. i grab natasha’s arm and whisper, “you have to see this…” i need to share this experience, not for sharing’s sake, but to make sure what i am seeing is real. it is. i turn away. my stomach can’t take anymore. 

God, where are You in this? are You among these people?
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My visit to India in 2010 resulted in a move to India in 2011. Like many nations around the world, India is considered to be a “developing nation” but, like many nations around the world, there is still much to be developed. Its easy to read about developing nations as if they are economic experiments, experiments done with money and therefore with the understanding that with enough money in all the proper places, the nation will emerge from being underdeveloped to developed. Its science or math or something. I suppose this is true on some levels – the scene I encountered on my first train ride out of Delhi would lend itself to this theory. But then again, as we know all too well in the West, there are many things that money can’t fix. I discovered that India had problems far out of the reach of money. Its problems go down to its very soul.

I wrote this a few months before I moved to India:

(June 29, 2011 journal entry)
Father, teach me to wait for You. to wait in the uncomfortable silence of inaction on Your part (seemingly, of course). teach me to wait in the yet-to-be redeemed pieces of life. to sit and believe and glorify you even when it is still dark. to learn how to be light in darkness. yet, to pray the darkness away but then to return to where i actually am, and to know how to love in brokenness. to accept my own brokenness in a deeper way, to sit with it and understand it instead of glimpsing it and running or pushing or pulling. deeper understanding will bring deeper change. teach me to sit with grief in silence, but in hope. to not have an answer except that You are the Answer and to be at peace about not knowing what that actually means.
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As the saying goes – be careful what you ask God for!

When I moved to India I realized I wasn’t very good at coping with brokenness. Every day when I would walk out my door, I would see it and hear it and touch it all around me. Every nation and every culture has brokenness, don’t get me wrong, but India is the kind of place that doesn’t try to cover it up. It can’t. There are far too many people with far too many problems to even try. And so there it is before you – disease, sickness, depression, sorrow, suffering, poverty, hopelessness, and death, all mixed in with economic development and the worship of thousands of gods promising lies, and beautiful colours and languages and people. Brokenness clothes itself in people. In the heat of the day it wraps itself tight around them, so tight they choke from its hold and sweat from its many layers, gasping for breath and relief. But there is no relief. The rulers and authorities in India whip the backs of their people into perfect submission. There is darkness everywhere. I remember on more than one occasion when walking the streets of New Delhi, I would look around in horror and silently pray, “God, where are You?” So much poverty, so much brokenness, so much darkness. I couldn’t reconcile all this with God’s presence.There were days when I concluded that God was simply not there. How could He be? It seemed impossible to find His presence. He was moving in the world and in people but somehow He must have forgotten India. There was no proof of His existence – His goodness and power and redemptive work could not be seen. It was just too dark. And this realization shook my faith because I had always been taught that God was everywhere and that God loved all people. But these people? They were forgotten or perhaps even abandoned.They were being ravaged by the enemy and left to die alone. In some places and people, there was no light at all.

At the end of the book of Job, Job makes a profound statement – “I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You” (42:5). Here was a man who had experienced firsthand a God who gives and takes away but who, in all of his sorrow and loss, would not turn His back on God. Near the end of the story, before God restores to Job all that was taken, and even more so, Job in his rags and poverty encounters, perhaps for the first time, His Creator. I guess sometimes life gets in the way of vision. All his life, he had heard about God and had second-hand experiences of Him and of His provision but finally, with everything but his wife taken from him, He saw God. When you see God the way Job saw Him, you need nothing else. Dare I say, you want nothing else.

I must confess, when it came to darkness and despair, I didn’t ever believe it truly existed. I mean, I’ve seen movies and read books and whatnot, but darkness is not something you can read about and then understand. I guess in my life I just believed that God wouldn’t let it get that far. I didn’t think too much about it either, because after all I was a person of faith and I was trusting and obeying and walking in the Spirit and so even if it seemed dark, it really wasn’t, at least not for long. Storms come but Jesus is always there to calm them, right? These were my rumors of God.

I left India broken. Six months of insomnia slowly (or quickly, depending on one’s perspective) chipped away at my edges until my core cracked open. I moved back to my old hometown, Vancouver, where I thought I would begin to heal but instead I got worse. Despite sleeping pills and anti-depressants, I continued to break. There were certainly signs of improvement at times, but over all I sunk deep into depression, drowning in lost hopes and dreams, overcome with sorrow and grief and confusion and fear. It would be my undoing. And there I sat, day after day, and began to face what I feared the most – my own darkness. I feared it because I didn’t really believe that I would or could find God in it, just like I couldn’t find Him in India’s darkness.There were places in my heart I had not yet explored, never mind let God in to mine. To be honest, I didn’t even know they existed. But when all else was removed from me – my family and friends and home and car and job and dreams and abilities and health and so many things I found life and my identity in – I finally had a chance to just sit with my heart and my God and weep. And then eventually I came to places on this journey that were so desolate and dark that I could no longer even find God in them. All I heard was whispers of despair and all I saw was hopelessness. Will I ever get out alive? Can I ever be healed? Am I too far gone now? I waited and waited but God did not come. Has God abandoned me? Has God forgotten me? Has God left me to be ravaged too? And finally, the question that I had asked in the darkness of India I screamed out in the darkness of my own heart:

GOD, WHERE ARE YOU?

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, You are there… If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will become night’ – even the darkness is not dark to You. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to You” (Psalm 139:7-8, 11-12).

He was there. Though I didn’t see Him at the time, or feel Him or hear Him, He was there. How do I know? Because at the end of myself, when I made my bed in hell and no longer believed there was any hope left, I collapsed unconscious in His arms. He met me there in my darkness and He lifted me out.

Even in the pit of despair, even in the darkest night or soul or nation, God is doing a new thing. You may not see it with your eyes, but if you stop and let Him into your own darkness, even the deepest, ugliest parts of who you are, you will know it is true beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is always, always hope. And if you let Him in, He will bring you back to life. And you, like Job, will no longer think you know God because of rumors you had heard about Him, but you will know Him because you have seen Him with the eyes of your soul and you have watched Him resurrect you.

And that is how I know God is in India.

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