Because We Are Able PT III “The Reunion”

Prisha looks ahead at a long stretch of straight road. She can see the heat rising off the asphalt. She can feel it blistering the bottom of her feet. Feet that are burned, cracked, bleeding. Her lips are the same. Just a mass of blisters and she has developed sores on her nose as well. Her will to go on is nearly gone. If it weren’t for her son. If it weren’t for her mother, she would have just stopped days ago like so many others did. Just walked off the road and found a tree to sleep under. A tree to sleep under forever.

She has been walking with two others for the last few days. The rest have either made it to their destination or didn’t make it at all. The two she is with are not from her village. Those from her village were among those that had gone and found a tree.

She wants to cry, but she can’t spare the strength or the water it would take. So, she shuffles along. Head down. Watching her feet. Making sure one moves forward, then the next. Each step forward is a step closer to her son. Closer to her mother. Her fear for them far outweighs her fear for her own life. She knows they must have no food by now. The thought of her son, her mother, starving is more than she can bear and it drives her on.

It is mid-day though now and the sweltering heat is burning her lungs. She looks up and nudges the elbow of the woman walking beside her and points to a grove of trees on the side of the road. They must rest now until the sun is behind them. The woman nods and tugs on the sleeve of the third traveler and points to the grove. The three of them stumble down the bank towards the life-saving shade. That’s when they hear the sound of a whining engine behind them. Gears grinding. Brakes squealing.

All three turn and look, eyes wide as a truck grinds to a halt on the side of the road. A frail, elderly man steps down from the truck and stands there for a moment, hands on hips. Then he motions for them to come back up to the road. He asks each of them in turn where they have come from and where they are going. They reply in hoarse whispers. He says nothing in return, but points to the back of the truck, a flatbed with rails, mostly filled with fruit and vegetables, but with enough space at the back for the three of them. He helps them in, one by one and when they are all three in the truck he points to the produce and says, “eat a little.”

Prisha sits and stares as the truck lurches forward. She simply cannot believe it. Tears fill her eyes as the truck picks up speed. Looking back, she watches the road as the long straight stretch disappears when they round a corner. Five minutes later and they have gone further than they would have in an entire day. That seems impossible. Where was this truck, any truck, all these days? 

Prisha and her companions help themselves to some fruit. They are all ravenous, but she knows to be careful, so she eats slowly. She has had so little to eat that she knows she will become ill if she gives into her desire to eat everything in sight. After three pieces of fruit, she settles back against the rails of the truck, leaning her head against a pile of sturdy vegetable stocks, and then closes her eyes, taking in deep, ragged breaths. She is beyond exhausted. The sun has gone down now, just a small crescent on the horizon. Sleep comes. And even though she is jostled this way and that, it is still sleep.

She awakens once, just for a moment when the truck comes to a stop. She opens her eyes and looks at her surroundings. Not her stop. But both of her companions climb out of the back of the truck, not even giving her a backwards glance. She watches them for a moment as the truck lurches forward once again, then closes her eyes, hoping for more sleep.

Sleep comes, but then so do dreams. She dreams she has arrived at her village, but something is dreadfully wrong. There is no one there. The homes are all empty. The children all gone. She runs from place to place and then through the trees, calling out for her son, calling her mother’s name, but no one answers. She is too late! She has lost them both. Her long and torturous journey has been for nothing. It is the sound of her own voice, crying out into the night that wakes her. It is morning already. 

The driver has driven through the night. She realizes suddenly that if he hadn’t stopped, she would have never made it! How far have they come? Then she remembers her dream and feels panic rise up inside her. She stands and looks around. The shadows are still long in the new morning light, but she recognizes the fields that are flashing by. Recognizes structures in the distance. Fields where she once worked! They are getting close to her village. Only a few more miles. But what will she find? The money she sent and the food it would have bought will have been long gone. Long gone. Will her terrible dream become a reality? Has she lost everything that she loves? All that matters?

Moments later, they round a corner and she can see the short road to her village. She cries out to the driver, leaning over the edge of the rail and pointing at her road. The driver sees her in the mirror and pushes hard on the brakes, sending her flying face forward into the produce. The truck comes to a stop, just past the road. Prisha climbs out of the back and walks to the to the open window of the truck, thanking the driver over and over. He simply nods and smiles before grinding the truck into gear and leaving her standing there on the side of the road.

She turns and looks back at the road to her village. She has made it. Just a few hundred yards down the road, her son and mother are waiting. The home where her son was born is waiting. But what will she find?

She moves quickly to the road. As quickly as her tattered feet and weak legs can carry her. Down the road she walks to her home, the first on the left. She walks up the short path and pulls the blanket that serves as a door aside, fearful of what she will find. There, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room is her son and mother, eating from plates filled with food. They turn and look at her in disbelief. They all cry out at the same time, Advik and his grandmother scrambling up from the floor and rushing into Prisha’s outstretched arms. Tears flow and questions fly from three mouths all at the same time. 

Prisha tells the harrowing story of her journey, leaving out much of the tragedy she had witnessed to spare her son from the sad truth. They in turn told her of their own time waiting for word from her. Of their worry and sleepless nights. But, through it all, Prisha has a question burning to be asked. In the middle of one of her mother’s sentences, she blurts it out; “Where did the food come from?” “How have you gone all of this time since I sent the last money?”

Advik smiled and took her mother by the hand. “Come and see!” he said, pulling her to her feet. He took her to the far corner of the room and pulled a blanket aside and pointed. There in the corner were bags of food. Enough for weeks! Prisha couldn’t believe her eyes! How could this be? “Where did you get this?

Advik explained to her that they had been out of food for 3 days. His grandmother was getting ready to leave and try to find food when a truck pulled into the village. The back of the truck was filled with food and men passed out enough food for a month to every home in the village. The food was a gift from a Christian Children’s Home not far from the village and they promised to return each month. Advik told her that it was given in the name of someone…someone named Jesus.

Prisha fell to her knees and wept; thanking this Jesus whom she has never met.

The story of Prisha and Advik represents a sad and tragic reality for many thousands of orphans and widows. They also represent an incredible opportunity for an expansion of Orphan’s Lifeline’s programs to bring God’s love, compassion and Word to orphans and widows within their own homes. Perhaps it seems bold to be expanding in times like this, but Jesus said: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” We believe. And therefore… we are able.

Because We Are Able PT II

Advik sits crossed-legged, alone in the dark in the corner of his bedroom. He can hear his grandmother snoring softly on the other side of the blanket that divides his small space from hers. 

It has been dark for a few hours now and dark always means bed-time; but he gave up trying to sleep about an hour ago. He simply has too much on his mind. So many different feelings inside his head. Part of him is excited because he knows that his mother is on her way home to him. He hasn’t seen her since he was 8, fourteen squares ago. His grandmother had made him a calendar and showed him how to mark off time on it. 14 squares meant 14 months and there were 12 months in a year his grandmother said. So, one year and 2 more squares. Thinking about it made his head hurt and he wishes he had been able to go to school so it made more sense. His grandmother has taught him what she could, but he knows there is much more because some of his friends in the village go to school. They can read words. They can write words.

Excitement is just one feeling he has though. He is also very worried. It has been a long time now since they have heard from his mother. Grandmother said her phone died. He has seen the tears of worry in his grandmother’s eyes when he asks when she will be home, even though she tries hard to hide them, even turning her back before she answers.

But Advik has another feeling too. It’s one he doesn’t really understand and he can’t think of a word for it. He has only seen his mother 5 times that he can remember although he knows she came home other times, but he was too young to remember. And each time was the same. A large bus stopped at the end of the road and his mother and other mothers from the village would climb off. Then, just days later, another bus would stop and his mother and the other mothers were gone again. This is what is giving him the strange feeling because his grandmother said that she might be home for a very long time. Because of some sickness that people are giving each other in the cities.

He knows he should be happy, but he also feels scared. Yes, that’s it, scared! That’s the feeling, but why? He has dreamt of the day that his mother would come home forever. But now that she really might be, he feels scared. Then it hits him and he can feel a knot growing in his stomach. He doesn’t really know his mother. She is like a blurry dream that comes and goes. What if she doesn’t like him when she is around all the time? What will they do after the hugs and laughter and walks outside? After the stories of the city are all told? Then what? She won’t be getting on a bus and things won’t go back to normal. She will still be there!

Which gives him another worry. What are they going to eat? His mother has always sent money for food, but that stopped when she left the city. The last money she sent only lasted about 5 days and they had eaten much less than normal. The thought makes him hungry. Since then, his grandmother has gotten a little food from neighbors each day and sometimes she went to a bigger village and came home with more, but is still wasn’t much. What will happen when his mother comes home and they all have to share the food? There won’t be enough! 

Which makes him feel anger! Anger at the person who made all of this happen. The person who made his mother have to work so far away. The person who should be there bringing home food so his mother could be at home with him. His father! 

But how could he feel such anger towards someone he has never met? He doesn’t really understand that, but the feeling is real! 

He stands up from his blanket and can feel his heart pounding from an anger that he has never felt. He walks in small circles in the dark, careful not the disturb the blanket between him and his grandmother. 

He has no memories of his father at all. He only knows that he left his mother when he was just a baby. His aunt told him the story one night when the two of them were alone around the fire. She said she wanted him to understand why he didn’t get to be with his mother. She said it made her very angry too. She told him that very same night that her husband had died not long after her second child. She said he drank too much of something.

The village he is in only has three fathers in it! Out of all of the homes there, only three fathers and one uncle who cares for his brother’s children. 

Some of the children have no mother or father. Only a grandmother. It’s so confusing! Where are all the fathers? Why don’t they love their children!?

Finally, it’s just more than he can take. He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He can feel the knot in his stomach growing. He tries hard to hold it all in; all the worry, all the fear, all the anger. He covers his mouth with both hands, but the scream escapes and now he is sobbing uncontrollably! 

His grandmother is there in an instant. She bursts through the blanket and runs right into Advik!

“Advik! What is wrong? Why did you scream? Why are you crying?”

She holds him tight against her and rubs the back of his head with her gnarled fingers. She senses he is not ready to tell her and so she just holds him tight against her until the sobs finally subside. Then she leads him by the hand to her side of the room and gently sits him down on her own blanket; then walks away and lights a candle before she returns.

She sits across from him on the blanket and sets the candle so the soft glow illuminates both of their faces. She lifts his down-turned head with a gentle nudge under his chin. 

He looks up at his grandmother. The one person who has never left him no matter what. Oh, how he loves her! He can see the worry in her eyes. He can see her lips trembling as she reaches out and brushes the tears away from his eyes. He smiles a little. Then he reaches out and takes her hands in his own and tells her. Tells her everything…

Because We Are Able PT I

Prisha is dreaming. It’s a pleasant dream; founded in truth, but old truth. A truth from times long past. From the days when smiles and laughter were commonplace for Prisha. When she was young and in love and the future had held the naïve hope that blind love often brings. When her husband was still her husband. When her husband was still alive.

She is at her first home, just outside of the city. A humble, but solid little structure within a cluster of similar homes, occupied by families of a similar background. 

She is sitting outside, bouncing her baby boy on one knee as she eagerly awaits her husband’s return from the city. It is a warm afternoon. Warm, but not hot; and a gentle breeze carries the scent of flowers. In the background she can hear her mother singing softly as she prepares food for the family. Prisha looks into the deep pools of brown and gold in the eyes of her young son and laughs at the toothless smile and chubby cheeks.

Suddenly, her husband is there; stepping off the dirt path and crossing the small patch of green grass in front of their home. He is young and handsome; his eyes sparkling with love as he takes a knee and stretches out his arms and calls to her. She rushes to meet him, her son cradled in one arm.

 But that’s when newer truth worms its way into her dream. For when she crosses the small patch of grass that separates them, he is no longer there, but is now further away, on the path. When she reaches the path, he is gone again; now standing on the road. And now he is not alone. He is with that other woman. He points at her and laughs. The scent of flowers on the gentle breeze has been replaced with the smell of hours-old alcohol and cigarettes on his breath. She calls out to him, but he and the woman simply turn their backs and walk away. Suddenly they are gone and she stands alone with her son on the path.

He is crying.

Prisha is awakened by the sound of her own voice calling out her husband’s name. She hears someone near her asking her to be quiet and she whispers her apology to the faceless voice in the dark. She pushes herself upright on the hard ground and rubs dirt and grass from her elbows as her eyes try hard to find light within the blackness that surrounds her. She can feel moisture on her face and she wipes away a tear as the images of the dream begin to fade, but the feelings of sadness and despair remain.

She holds her cracked and dried hands to her face and sobs. The hopelessness of her situation takes hold once again as it has every day since the lockdowns were put in place by the government and her long journey home had begun. She isn’t even really sure where she is. She has no idea how long she has been on the road. She had quit counting days some days before. 

The caravan of migrant workers she is in has dwindled somewhat over time. First it was many thousands of workers from the city where she had lived for the past 14 months in the factory dormitory. Many from the same factory she had worked in. Others from farms. Some domestic laborers. All migrant workers many miles from their homes when the government shut down the factories and ordered all migrant workers to return home when the virus hit the region hard.

The journey thus far has been a blur of treacherous days that morphed into weeks on an endless, scorching highway. The first hundred miles had been traversed on crowded buses. They had been loaded like cattle; poked and prodded onto the bus by police using long, white poles to move them along. Then the buses had stopped, unloaded them on a straight stretch of asphalt and turned around and headed back to the city, leaving her with more than 200 miles to go.

Her sandals had fallen apart many miles ago and she had torn strips of cloth from her clothing to tie the soles back onto her feet. The cloth has since rubbed her feet raw and they throb and burn endlessly. She is hungry, dehydrated and exhausted, but she is still alive, which puts her among the blessed in the caravan. 

Many have perished along the way. Heatstroke took some she had come to know. They were usually the ones who chose not to take the daily detours from the highway to the river. Five were killed by one truck that struck them on a corner some days back. Many others had just wandered off the roads into fields or trees and simply gave up; their energy spent. Their bodies and minds broken and done. 

She doesn’t blame them. She has entertained the thought of curling up and going to sleep forever under a tree somewhere several times. But she can’t. She has a son who needs her. A mother who needs her. They have no one else to care for them and it has been weeks now since she used her phone to send them her last week’s pay. The phone itself had become a victim of the journey more than a week ago and she hasn’t been able to communicate with her son or mother. The last communication had been a three-day-old text she had received from her mother: The food is gone. Going to see if there are government rations in town. 

Prisha doesn’t hold much hope that her mother was successful. In her travels toward home thus far, she has found two food lines, both run by local charities, not the government. She had stood in line for hours and in both cases, received enough food for two days. Food that she had stretched into four days in each case with many days of hunger in between. She is weak from lack of nutrition and the thought of her son and mother feeling this pain is almost more than she can bear. How much further could it still be? How many days? How many nights? Will they still be alive? No! She cannot allow herself to believe otherwise or her will to go on will be lost!

Now there is a soft glow on the horizon and she can begin to see the shapes of trees as dawn begins. It’s time to get ready for another long day on the road. Best to travel early and stop before the hottest hours of the day. She stands on wobbly legs and gathers her meager belongings together into a small cloth bag. Three plastic bottles, two filled with river water, one now empty. Two pieces of fruit, harvested without permission from a roadside farm and a small piece of cloth to provide her head some protection from the blistering sun. 

She can see others moving about now; just shadows in the early morning light. She takes a ragged breath and breaths it out through cracked, dry lips. It’s time to go. 

Ignorance Is Bliss

“Ignorance is Bliss” 

Most of us have probably heard this saying at some point in our lives. The words were penned by Thomas Gray, a 17th Century poet when he wrote ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eaton College.”

It is basically a whimsical reflection of how the gaining of wisdom also equates to the loss of innocence. The loss of the illusion of immortality that children experience as they move from childhood to adulthood. The inevitable loss of the seemingly endless summer days filled with play and fantasy as age brings knowledge and knowledge brings with it the reality of man’s physical mortality and the pain and suffering that will at times accompany it.

I think that each and every one of us can think of a time in our life where we have felt that ignorance would be bliss. Perhaps we have even wished for that ignorance at different times.

I am old enough to remember a time before the 24-hour news cycle. Before social media. Before Google and the ability to access “instant knowledge.” 

The world was very disconnected and relatively small from a personal perspective in those days. We knew very little about what was going on in the next county, let alone what was going on around the world. When we did learn about something on a global basis, it was big news only. The kind of news that made worthy headlines within the limited time and/or space available within the news media. But, as I said, most of our news back then was local and even personal. It was indeed a small world and to some extent, perhaps a seemingly more peaceful world. Ignorance is bliss. Or is it?

The problem with ignorance lies within its very definition. By definition, it is a lack of knowledge or information. While that might give a person some false sense of peace or security, it is indeed false and fleeting. It doesn’t chance the facts or truth of the state of things beyond our sight or hearing. 

We are living in a time where it would be very tempting to just block out everything around us. Who really wants to know about the pandemic and how many people are dying from it? Who really wants to know about the riots and looting? Who wants to listen to the political rhetoric of the day? Who wants to hear about the number of jobs being lost, the businesses that are closing, the dire economic forecast or the predictions of what is to come if this happens or that happens? 

The answer is, nobody. Not really. Because that information causes us pain. It causes us worry. It causes us to question what the future holds for us as well as the generations to come. 

But it is very important to remember one thing. Knowledge is not wisdom. Not by itself.

One very important piece of that is perspective. Perspective is gained by position. Where you are standing and the view that it gives you is critical to how you intake and process the information or knowledge that you receive from any given source. As Christians, our perspective is unique in the sense that we should seek to view things in the same way that Jesus would. 

I believe that first, Jesus would, of course, consider the source of that information. He would identify the truth and the lies. He would filter out the noise and focus on the truthful facts, never relying on the opinions of man, but the bare truth that lies amidst all of that noise. He would take those truths and make Godly decisions based upon those truths, for that is the essence of wisdom.

He would not look first at how it was impacting His life, but rather how it was impacting others lives and would seek avenues to lessen the pain and suffering of others. He would make sacrifices to make that happen and in doing so, would gain far more than He lost.

We are not witnessing much of that in our world right now. Not much of what we see embodies or projects the wisdom that God asks us to seek and exhibit in our daily lives. Rather, we are witnessing quite the opposite on a daily basis.

While the pandemic rages on around the world, in the most prosperous nation on earth, people have taken to the streets demanding more for themselves. They are ignoring the fact that there are millions of people around the world that are just days away from death by starvation. 

They are blaming our government for a poor response to the pandemic while thousands per day are starving because of the lockdowns in countries where millions live hand to mouth even in good times.

In India, there is plenty of food, but there are millions of people who have no money to buy the food. Millions of migrant workers have left the cities and are forced to walk, sometimes hundreds of miles back to their own villages. Thousands will never make it.

 In Africa, there are food shortages due to lack of workers, lack of transportation and a plague of locusts. Starving children are being beaten by untrained police, blindly and violently enforcing the lockdown on the innocent and desperate scrounging for scraps of food.

Experts have a dire prediction. They predict that up to 12,000 people will die every day in these countries from starvation alone. Far more than the number that will die from the virus itself.

Perspective. Wisdom.

Every day, without fail, we receive news from the Directors of our children’s homes. While the news varies slightly, it is much the same everywhere. The children we care for are doing well, but the people in the villages and towns around them are suffering greatly.

The Directors are being asked to help the thousands of widows and orphans who have no source of food. The Directors are in turn asking us to help them help those that suffer. It is heartbreaking. 

Perspective. Wisdom.

I know that many of you, myself included, watch the news each day with trepidation. It’s easy to do. Easy to allow worry and fear to rule the day, and it’s not all without warrant. But it’s also important to maintain the proper perspective. To position our minds and hearts in such a manner that we gain the perspective that God would have us seek. To seek His wisdom and find the truth amidst all of the noise in the information and knowledge we intake each and every day. 

Wisdom. It is the crown jewel surrounded by the thorns of knowledge. A person cannot experience the benefits of wisdom without first experiencing the pain of knowledge. And, while knowledge may bring pain, wisdom will bring peace and without it, one will never truly gain what God intended us to gain from this life He has given us. We must seek that wisdom and within it reflect His will in our actions. 

We are thankful for each and every one of you and pray for your well-being, freedom from fear and security during these troubled times. May God give each and every one of you, wisdom, and the peace that comes with it.