DownshoreDrift

Well, it's 2am and I'm up. Jet lag is doing it's worst, as I passed out exhausted around 6pm. I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but to no avail. The trip back was rather grueling, and 36 hours later, I walked into my house around midnight on Friday. I did get to spend several hours in Paris, though. That was cool. On Saturday, I rested and hung out with my family. It is good to be home.

When I have returned from past trips, I have been happy to be back and didn't really miss the area that I had been too. I've appreciated America and all the blessings that we have here. That is changing, however. I am thinking about India and the grinding poverty that I encountered there. India has VERY wealthy pockets, which elevate it on all the global statistics of poverty in the world, but it also has around 800 million people who live in horrible degradation. It really is the tale of two countries.

What is changing in me is a sense of anger over our wealth and waste. We have so much, yet so few doing something constructive with it. I am speaking primarily of Christians here. This is not some rant against the church (that's too easy of a target), but rather, we all need to be doing more. Global travel and communication is so easy now. There is no reason for all of us not to be on the front lines of God's Kingdom work, whether it is locally or globally. The only thing that holds us back is sin, selfishness, and our own grasping at security. When and how will we trust God for the nations? We can no longer send off our missionaries as proxies to do it for us. We must be involved. Marty Duren put up a post the other day saying how we could be involved and he was relatively ignored. I'm going to be giving some ideas this week, I hope, and I expect almost no comments on it either. Oh well, I write for me and the few that want to see change come to a broken world.

India has grabbed my heart. I am tired and weary right now, and I am getting ready for Sunday service. I don't know if I'll be able to go back to sleep or not, but I pray that I am able to communicate some of what I have seen and heard. God is moving in North India and I pray that we join Him. The task is large, but so is our God.

Tonight is my last in India. I fly out in a few hours (we are approximately 12 hours AHEAD of Central Standard Time, so, I'll take off approximately 2pm on Thursday back home). I'll fly eight hours to Paris, and then have a planned seven hour layover. I hope to take a train into the heart of Paris and walk around for a while and get some good pictures. I hear there are some things worth seeing there. I'm a bit skeptical, but, who knows? Maybe it will be more visually pleasing than Montgomery. :)  Then, I'll fly another eight hours to Kennedy airport in New York. I'll have over a 3 hour layover there, where I will have to take a shuttle to LaGuardia. I'll then fly almost 3 hours to Atlanta, where hopefully someone will pick me up and I will drive over two hours home. I should get home a little after midnight on Saturday morning, having sat in airports, airplanes, shuttles, trains, and cabs for over 36 hours. International travel is not for the faint of heart. Your prayers are much appreciated!

Last night, I visited the oldest Hindu temple in Dehli and the largest Sikh temple. It was grueling. I joined with Paul in being "greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols" (Acts 17:16). People were lying prostrate in front of statues of monkeys and elephants in the Hindu temple, and they were bowing before a holy book in the Sikh temple. I've seen all this before, but it affected me strongly last night. Maybe I've come to care for the people more and I no longer see them as aliens or objects. I think that I am just grieved.

Thom and I spent hours talking at a restaurant last night after the temple tour. He really is fascinating. I've known him for 10 years now, and he always challenges me and keeps me thinking. This morning, over eggs and toast, we began to talk about the global struggle for human dignity and freedom and we nailed down some plans to create the Parks-Phule Human Dignity Award.  It would be an annual award given in India to a person who labored to lift people out of despair and bondage in a struggle to provide justice, mercy, and hope from the position of following Jesus. Parks would refer to Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights movement that started in Montgomery where I live, and Phule would refer to Mahatma Phule, the Indian Father of Social Revolution. Both were guided and influenced by the ethics and person of Jesus Christ. Our hope is that by highlighting these values, we will be able to encourage others to do the same, and thus live out the call of Jesus to lift the burdens off the oppressed and enslaved around the world spiritually, socially, and economically, by reconnecting them with the dignity bestowed upon them by their Creator through the acts of redemption, reconciliation, and restoration to the Imago Dei.

In this endeavor, Micah 6:8 guides our thinking: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Jesus changes everything. He reorients our thinking and transforms our purpose and presence in this world. Today, I was able to meet for a few hours with several Indian brothers who are living out Micah 6:8. They are leading significant ministries in India that are helping to facilitate movements of tens of thousands of low caste peoples out of Hinduism to becoming followers of The Way. They are also influencing politicians and academicians. I got to sit in on an "inner circle" conversation with them, and it was heady stuff. What an honor.

Soon, I'll go to dinner, and then I'll be off for the airport. I'm leaving so much behind in India in love, memories, and sorrow, and I am finding that my heart is growing more and more connected to these people. They are often gentle and kind. They are helpful. They are always smiling. But, they are not a simple people. Many are brilliant. They desperately want to change their nation, no matter their religious background. India is on the move, and as she awakens, her stretching shakes the world. We will all begin to encounter India more and more in our daily lives. The question is, which India? Many say that the future of India is up for grabs during this 20 year window (1995-2015). We are right in the middle of it. India is charting it's course and will take the world with her. Perhaps the Sovereign God is raising up people, like the ones I have met, for such a time as this. I hope to join them. Perhaps, in your own way, you will too.

Noise, pollution, dust, cars, buses, trucks, autorickshaws, motorcycles, ox carts, bicycles, people - all flying at you at a breakneck speed as you travel down broken roads past roadside shops and businesses for an uninterrupted 150 miles from Delhi to Dehradun. India is moving, hurtling forward into the progress of globalization that marks the 21st century, but still stuck in a past that leaves 800 million of her people in abject, horrifying poverty. You can make cell phone calls in the Himalayas (our cell phones do not even work between Montgomery and Birmingham on I-65 in Alabama), but you can't get clean water. There is the high tech, public face of India, depicted in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, and the shadow side, the real India, the backward India, called by it's ancient name, Bharat. Those two worlds are in collision, and the whole social structure is convulsing with the shock.

Emmanuel, the founder of the children's homes and schools that we worked with said that the British dealt the first blow to Hinduism and the caste structure by introducing education to the country. As they began to teach math, science, and history, over 50% of the power of Hinduism was wiped away. People began to think for themselves and, intellectually they left Hinduism behind. It's hold is now primarily cultural among the intellectual elite yet still religious among the masses. Primarily, Hinduism has it's strength among the women who protect the cultural and religious heritage of the people, but are treated like "dust under the feet" of the men. That is why Emmanuel and his daughter Helena are working to take Hindu orphan children, many of them girls, and educate them, teach them a trade, and give them the gospel. They are working with approximately 2,500 children in 6 different sites throughout the subcontinent and are changing India one life at a time.

Emmanuel believes that the rest of the Hindu structure involving caste and religion is being swept away by globalization. Communication with the West and a desire to enter the global community is causing India to involuntarily leave it's past behind. Traditionalists are madly scrambling to hold onto their culture and religious power, but India is a country of the young, and the young are looking to the future. The question is, as they leave the past behind, what will fill the gap? Materialism? Consumerism? Buddhism? Or maybe, can we seed the future of India with Christianity? Emmanuel thinks so.

Dr. Thom Wolf, who I am now staying with in New Delhi, says that this is India's moment. This is the moment that India is transitioning, and the question is, what will she transition to? He, and many others, are trying to help shape the future of India redemptively by looking to the past through Indian leaders like Phule, who was the father of social revolution in India - the Abraham Lincoln of India, so to speak. Thom has written a book with Sunil Sardar called Phule in His Own Words. This is significant because Phule, almost 150 years ago, called for a change from the Brahminical Hindu system of inequality to the Western Liberal system of equality and inalienable rights that are bestowed by a Creator and Liberator. Thom believes that this is India's moment for such a transition, and he is working to effect that from the top down and the bottom-up.

So, I guess that we are working for similar things. Involving this, I was asked the other day why we decided to work in North India. Years ago, I heard that Northern India was the Heart of Darkness, so to speak, with the largest concentration of unreached people groups in the world. As we visited Hardiwar and Rishikesh on the Ganges the other day, the second and third most holy cities for the Hindus, (Varinasi is the first) I was struck by how much evil pulses out of this place. I was also struck by the large number of Westerners that were trudging the streets, following the path of the Beatles, looking for enlightenment. Then, in a village outside Hardiwar where the children's home has planted a church and opened a day care serving 100 children, I met a man who came to faith through the television ministry of Joyce Meyer. She is doing great work in India and many are being transformed through her testimony. I know that's a lot of topics for one paragraph, but it aptly speaks to what it is like here. Just when you think you get a grasp on one aspect, you see God at work in another way. If this is India's moment, I am not surprised to see the God of history seeding the present and shaping the future.

Today and tomorrow I will spend time in New Delhi studying and putting my thoughts together on the return trip in the Fall for the conferences. I also hope to process what I have seen and learned a bit from a personal perspective. I might be doing some more of that on the blog as I have time. But, I am convinced that India is changing and that the Author of History has his hand on it. Incredible pictures of the trip will be up next week when I get home and they will help you see in a clearer way some of the hope and horror of India, as she lunges for the future while still shackled to her peasant past. May we all be a part of unlocking her chains through prayer, sacrifice, and witness. 

We're still here. Our three man team has been in North India for almost a week now. We flew into Delhi and immediately travelled north to a northern state near the Himalayas.  We had a driver who drove us approximately 8 hours through the plains. Driving here is very dangerous, as cars, trucks, motorcycles, ox carts, and auto rickshaws are flying at you from every direction. It is very scary, but after awhile, you just become numb to it. We have connected with a children's home and school and are working with them as a base of operations. They are connecting us with places to do a series of public health conferences in the fall as a platform to talk about true transformation. We have had three encounters that have gone really well.

Our first day out, we went into the Himalayas. We met with a doctor who has started his own hospital and is doing development work among the hill people. He is working with fresh water projects and providing community health care in the villages. We travelled to a village and met with a village head and heard about the problems there in the area. We later travelled into a valley between some mountains where we met with a Nepali congregation that had been started by a young church planter. We worshipped with them and I spoke from John 17. The congregation is very new and has about 20 families. God is doing amazing things. Throughout the trip, the fog and clouds were rolling in amongst the mountains and the mountain roads were very dangerous, but God provided safety. It was an amazing day. We will have a conference among the mountain villages here.

After this, we went to a hospital run by believers in the plains. They are doing community development work as well, and are sending teams out into the villages to do public health training. It is a large operation and they are doing a great deal of good. We will also have a one day conference in this area as well.

Yesterday, we pulled together 8-10 leaders that represented community development ministries and organizations in the mountains and the plains in North India. They are all doing church planting work as well. As a matter of fact, they had collectively started about 150 churches and were doing training and equipping of church planters. They are combining the spiritual and the social aspects and are engaging in holistic ministry among the people. We will do a two day conference with them and their workers as well that from a holisitic development approach. The amazing thing is that these ministries had never come together in this way before, and, after our meeting yesterday, are now talking about forming a network of transformational missionaries. This is far beyond what we thought we would be doing, and we are frankly, in over our head. I love it.

All of our work has been with indigenous people. Phone and computer access has been rare, so this is a short update. I have tons of pictures and many stories to tell, but I have to be careful about details for security reasons. Let me just say, that God is doing AMAZING things and doors are opening for incredible work in the future. We are serving as catalysts to bring people together and to help maximize their work. Tomorrow, we travel to one of the holy cities on the Ganges, and then we will spend a couple of days back in Delhi before returning home. This trip has far exceeded all expectations, and I wish that I could begin to tell you even a tenth of what we have experienced. Please pray for our safety and continuing success with divine encounters. I'll write again as soon as possible.