India
"God’s grace does not consist in anything we can hold in our hands but in whose hands we are held." Kelly Kapic
Culture shock is tame terminology for a small town mountain girl’s transition to Kolkata, India. A place that overflows with a total population of 16 million strewn with two million living on the streets. A 26-hour flight across the world has my nerves rattling and the somberness of a society void of grace strikes me like a bolt of lightning. The last leg of the flight from Qatar to Kolkata places me next to an Indian couple where it is apparent that the husband takes the dominant lead in every marital decision down to his voiceless wife’s "7UP® with no ice" drink choice. Groggily, I hobble down the airlines’ boarding steps to be hustled onto a bus that has seen better days and smells, and finally through the custom lines of my first encounter with a third world country.
As I sleepily shuffle through the sliding doors of an aged airport, I am caught up in the congregated gathering of inquisitive, piercing stares. I begin to practice averting my eyes from the men’s stares like I was taught in our training to avoid any misconceived notion of flirting. Eye contact or conversation with men can be taken as a sign of impropriety in this Indian culture. The intense stares are matched with a smell reminiscent of the pungent aroma surrounding an overflowing dumpster, but it comes in waves, and as I glance out into the sea of dark stares I huddle close to 12 companions who will become like sisters by the end of our journey.
Our missionary contacts are easy to spot with their fair skin in a sea of cocoa. The missionary girls are in their mid-20s and have spent the last two years making the city of Kolkata their home and mission field. I can already tell these girls have a supernatural confidence that emanates from within and soon find their assertiveness is a matter of survival in a country where the discrimination of women runs rampant. Our walk to the taxi is accompanied by men in uniform, while little hands and withered hands of beggars touch their parched mouths, motion to my American pockets, and pierce my heart. Vendors with chai tea in murky plastic pitchers roam the dirt parking lot jammed with cars and scattered trash. It's two in the morning, but the Muslim holiday Ashura, has droves of Muslims greeting relatives returning from a pilgrimage to commemorate and mourn the slaying of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in a battle in 680 AD. I’m already in sensory overload and merely two hundred steps onto Indian soil.
Men are everywhere in the streets at 4 A.M.; wandering, roaming, and carousing. Some are spitting words and throwing intoxicated punches. Others are driving bicycle carts with dead chickens stacked high doing their best to dodge shepherds who are navigating goats through darkened streets. Many taxi cabs are surging through the sleeping streets with no regard for traffic laws--not sure there are any actually. However, the most potent image that grips me within the first hour is a sidewalk lined with shanties and upwards to thirty people who cannot afford even the minimal accommodations of a roof, so they are sleeping side by side amidst the trash heaps. Even more telling are the individuals who wrap their arms tightly around their body in the fetal position because they have less than the blanket covered person beside them. My first encounter with poverty is staggering and is only a glimpse of what the rest of my time in India will unveil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian during Nazi control once wrote, "The first call in every Christian experience is the call to abandon the attachments of the world." My thoughts fly to these words as I venture into a part of our poverty-stricken world, stripped of physical and spiritual sustenance. According to the Census of India, 73% of the population in Kolkata is Hindu, 23% Muslim, 2% Christian, and 1% Jains. Other minorities such as Sikhs, Buddhist, Jews and Zoroastrian constitute the rest of the city's population. 1.5 million people, who constitute about a third of the city's population, live in 2,011 registered and 3,500 unregistered slums. The majority of these people have never heard the gospel; they offer animal sacrifices to Kali, their main worshipped goddess, and they will live and die without Christ if they are not told. David Platt pinpoints what burdens and grips my heart as I begin to soak up India, "Wake up. Wake up and realize that there are infinitely more important things in your life than football and a 401(k). Wake up and realize there are real battles to be fought, so different from the superficial meaningless 'battles' you focus on. Wake up to the countless multitudes who are currently destined for a Christless eternity."
The Lord begins to unveil his grace to me and uncover where I am trying to hold firm the gifts of the American Dream that are not meant to be my identity. Doesn't he challenge all of us with where we are finding our identity: our possessions, our children, our spouses, our reputations, or even our life--and then he confronts us with the path we choose to take when tragedies hit and any of these gifts are taken from us. These are the moments where God's ultimate gift can shine through, the unbreakable promise of belonging to him through the redemption of Christ. I see pockets of grace in a part of the world amassed in poverty, animal sacrifice to idols, children and women trafficking; a pocket of God’s people who are finding that his gift of relationship through his ultimate sacrifice is a hope of restoration and security in the midst of human error.
Culture shock is tame terminology for a small town mountain girl’s transition to Kolkata, India. A place that overflows with a total population of 16 million strewn with two million living on the streets. A 26-hour flight across the world has my nerves rattling and the somberness of a society void of grace strikes me like a bolt of lightning. The last leg of the flight from Qatar to Kolkata places me next to an Indian couple where it is apparent that the husband takes the dominant lead in every marital decision down to his voiceless wife’s "7UP® with no ice" drink choice. Groggily, I hobble down the airlines’ boarding steps to be hustled onto a bus that has seen better days and smells, and finally through the custom lines of my first encounter with a third world country.
As I sleepily shuffle through the sliding doors of an aged airport, I am caught up in the congregated gathering of inquisitive, piercing stares. I begin to practice averting my eyes from the men’s stares like I was taught in our training to avoid any misconceived notion of flirting. Eye contact or conversation with men can be taken as a sign of impropriety in this Indian culture. The intense stares are matched with a smell reminiscent of the pungent aroma surrounding an overflowing dumpster, but it comes in waves, and as I glance out into the sea of dark stares I huddle close to 12 companions who will become like sisters by the end of our journey.
Our missionary contacts are easy to spot with their fair skin in a sea of cocoa. The missionary girls are in their mid-20s and have spent the last two years making the city of Kolkata their home and mission field. I can already tell these girls have a supernatural confidence that emanates from within and soon find their assertiveness is a matter of survival in a country where the discrimination of women runs rampant. Our walk to the taxi is accompanied by men in uniform, while little hands and withered hands of beggars touch their parched mouths, motion to my American pockets, and pierce my heart. Vendors with chai tea in murky plastic pitchers roam the dirt parking lot jammed with cars and scattered trash. It's two in the morning, but the Muslim holiday Ashura, has droves of Muslims greeting relatives returning from a pilgrimage to commemorate and mourn the slaying of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in a battle in 680 AD. I’m already in sensory overload and merely two hundred steps onto Indian soil.
Men are everywhere in the streets at 4 A.M.; wandering, roaming, and carousing. Some are spitting words and throwing intoxicated punches. Others are driving bicycle carts with dead chickens stacked high doing their best to dodge shepherds who are navigating goats through darkened streets. Many taxi cabs are surging through the sleeping streets with no regard for traffic laws--not sure there are any actually. However, the most potent image that grips me within the first hour is a sidewalk lined with shanties and upwards to thirty people who cannot afford even the minimal accommodations of a roof, so they are sleeping side by side amidst the trash heaps. Even more telling are the individuals who wrap their arms tightly around their body in the fetal position because they have less than the blanket covered person beside them. My first encounter with poverty is staggering and is only a glimpse of what the rest of my time in India will unveil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian during Nazi control once wrote, "The first call in every Christian experience is the call to abandon the attachments of the world." My thoughts fly to these words as I venture into a part of our poverty-stricken world, stripped of physical and spiritual sustenance. According to the Census of India, 73% of the population in Kolkata is Hindu, 23% Muslim, 2% Christian, and 1% Jains. Other minorities such as Sikhs, Buddhist, Jews and Zoroastrian constitute the rest of the city's population. 1.5 million people, who constitute about a third of the city's population, live in 2,011 registered and 3,500 unregistered slums. The majority of these people have never heard the gospel; they offer animal sacrifices to Kali, their main worshipped goddess, and they will live and die without Christ if they are not told. David Platt pinpoints what burdens and grips my heart as I begin to soak up India, "Wake up. Wake up and realize that there are infinitely more important things in your life than football and a 401(k). Wake up and realize there are real battles to be fought, so different from the superficial meaningless 'battles' you focus on. Wake up to the countless multitudes who are currently destined for a Christless eternity."
The Lord begins to unveil his grace to me and uncover where I am trying to hold firm the gifts of the American Dream that are not meant to be my identity. Doesn't he challenge all of us with where we are finding our identity: our possessions, our children, our spouses, our reputations, or even our life--and then he confronts us with the path we choose to take when tragedies hit and any of these gifts are taken from us. These are the moments where God's ultimate gift can shine through, the unbreakable promise of belonging to him through the redemption of Christ. I see pockets of grace in a part of the world amassed in poverty, animal sacrifice to idols, children and women trafficking; a pocket of God’s people who are finding that his gift of relationship through his ultimate sacrifice is a hope of restoration and security in the midst of human error.
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