Today is our day of rest. Our family day. We started bright and early a little after 6. I sat outside on our veranda cuddling with Abe while Zana slept, sipping coffee and listening to early morning sounds.
We ate our coffee bread (a Saturday morning treate). And then Hubster and I packed both kids into Ergos and off we went to walk to the river.
It is a journey of miles across humanity, filth, and gaping needs. My Hubster prayed for the city talking about how God cared for Ninevah; its people and cattle. God cares about the tiny sparrows playing in the grey water on the side of the bazaar lane. God cares about why a calf lies dead, a rat is smooshed, a dog is clawed. I tend to overlook the animals as we see little homeless boys pulling plastic out of their feet, widows begging, a man with a withered hand, men sleeping poverty stricken on the side of the gulley, elderly ladies tugging at our sleeves asking for food, for anything. The humanity deeply suffering touched us today. We came home sober. In love with God more for sending His Son to enter into this world and walk on it. Walk through it. Die. Rise. Live.
It is good living here. Darkness seems too dark. Pain seems too vast. Suffering seems too endless. And yet in those darkest moments of facing the realities of this place Christ seems all the more lovely.
"As believers we never are dead. We go from life here to life with Christ." This beautiful truth resonated today as we emerged from gullys above the River at the Cremation Ghats. The photography shop with dead faces shrouded in marigolds warned me of where we might be but the piles of wood, the smoke, the sorrow, the hopelessness still hit us like a solid wall as we looked down into death and the river beyond. We turned to find another way down to the river upstream from the burning ghat where ashes return to ashes.
As believers we are never dead. We are always alive. We go from life to life. Glory Be!
That will be real rest. Until then may I truly care about Ninevah.
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