This past week was our mid-trip debrief. We took the week off from ministry & headed to Agra City for four days. We used this time to rest, regroup, spend time together, 
and process the last month and a half and talk about how we wanted to grow and see God move over the next month. Although it was nice to get away from the routine for a couple days, I was very excited to get back to Dwarka, which now feels like home.
We experienced a lot of firsts in Agra. Squatty potties on an Indian train, Indian’s following us around with cameras & phones taking our pictures like we were celebrities or something (awkward), and the world famous, Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal is an extravagant monument built by the emperor hundreds of years ago in honor of his beloved bride who died. Looking at and walking through the Taj Mahal, you can’t deny how great the love was that the emperor had for his wife, 
even after her death. What an amazing and beautiful act of love.
As I thought about the love he had for his bride, I couldn’t help but think of the extraordinary, unbelievable love Christ has for us. Just as the emperor wrote more to the love story between him and his wife with this act of love once she was dead, Christ, too, has written us our own, individual love story, even when we were dead. Ephesians 2.1 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” Before Christ, we are not just dying, we are dead. However, there is a greater love, even greater than that of the emperor. Romans 5.8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” A shameful death on a cross with no beautiful monument, just a tree on a hill. Yet the beauty of the Taj Mahal does not compare to the mighty, beautiful cross and the love it represents, dead in our sin, but alive in Christ if we choose to believe. The most beautiful of all love stories. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
