Yesterday morning, I woke up sweating to a hot and congested
cement room to the sound of Hindu bells after an awful night of sleep. My hopes of taking a bucket shower to cool
off were apparently a bit too high, as there was not a drop of running water in
our house. In a state of 6:30am apathy
and confusion, I went outside, still wearing shorts from when I woke up, to see
if the spigot had any water. The water
dripped out slowly, so I stuck my head right under it, contented for anything I
could get. Before half my hair was wet,
there were about a million mosquitos biting my bare arms and legs, and two Indian
women standing a foot away from me, upset that I was using our collective
water, muttering in Bengali, and glaring at me like I was completely naked (my
knees were showing, so by Indian standards, I might as well have been). Still dripping with sweat and relishing the
awkwardness of this situation, I went back inside with my half-wet greasy hair,
stumbled back to my bed and put my face in my lumpy pillow.
Later that morning, Hannah and I had to go downtown to
Kolkata to mail some documents back to the States. After waiting an extra hour here at home for
a stranger Indian man to fix our bathroom that has been broken for the past
month and a half, we made our way out at the peak of the hottest part of the
day. Hopped on a public bus with a well-estimated 70 Indian passengers squished
into every seat and corner of the isle the bus could possibly allow, and we all
shared sweat as we rubbed up next to each other, as the bus started and stopped
abruptly every mile. Over the course of
the hour-long bus ride, I couldn’t strike a guess at the amount of big
brown-eyed stares we had accumulated, or the foreign words spoken to me that I
couldn’t understand, or give a hint of justice to the smells along the
way. All I know is it was 108 degrees, I
was nauseous, we were on that bus for over two hours when all was done, and that
was just about long enough.
Which brings me to last night, when after a long and hot and
tiring day, we came back after to the house after prayer, and the power was
out, and there was still no water anywhere.
This was by far the hottest night yet, still probably about 90 degrees
this time of night in our little house…pitch black, no fans, windows closed, no
ventilation. And honestly, as I sit wide-awake
in the dark on my sleeping pad on the cement ground, still sweating, I feel a
little miserable, but more so thankful.
Lately I have been reading in the book of John and the other
Gospels about Christ’s life on earth. In
the past few days whenever I feel at all irritated by any aspect of my life
here, the Lord has been reminding me this: I came to India from the United
States, and yes, my life is admittedly a little less comfortable. When Jesus came, He came from Heaven down to earth. He came from a place of utter
perfection, unity with the Father, full of worship and glory and light and
honor. He came as a stranger into the
world, a place of pain, discomfort, darkness, sin, and godlessness. He was rejected, misunderstood, mocked. Somehow I think that was a lot more
uncomfortable than me as an American living in a third-world country with a
language barrier. I’ve given up a lot of
things to be here. But! Christ gave up everything to come dwell among us as
sinners, and He only did it so He could later pay the price for us.
I marvel about how Christ’s incomparable love for us
outweighed His discomfort that came from living on earth, and I want to feel
that every moment here. That my love for
India far outweighs my discomforts.
Every morning when I wake up to the same unutterable smell and to the heat,
I want to smile and thank the Lord for another sweltering day here to love these
people who need Jesus so badly. I pray
that I can be a person who lives with such gratitude for what Christ has done
and is doing in my life, that nothing can even cast a shadow on the joy that I
have. I want to live a life that
exemplifies and imitates Jesus, no matter the difficulties along the way.
I am a stranger here in a foreign place. Yes, sometimes a
little uncomfortable…
But what can I say? I learn
from the Best.
John 1:10-14
