These henna-stained fingers are hesitant for the first time in a while. I don’t know what to write; and I don’t know what I’m supposed to write. A call to change? A bellow of anger at the poverty and injustice my team and I have witnessed over and over these weeks? Or perhaps a tearful confession of how selfish I feel after witnessing the immense hospitality of this place. All of them, and at the same time none of them, match what I have experienced, and am still experiencing, here.
This land is full of paradoxes and impossibilities. In a week, I have simultaneously seen the most revolting and cruel kind of poverty and the beautiful generosity of a God who liberally provides. The haze of one of the world’s most polluted cities smears the blue sky, but at night reflects the orange street lights for an eerily stunning canopy of flameless fire. Hope and misery dance dangerously close to a precipice, each threatening to throw the other over and into the abyss.
This is a heavy realm to be, and it’s hard to live here without becoming a calloused grumble among the endless string of horns and construction. How can I stay in the glorious sunshine when I have peeked into and lingered at the edge of the yawning chasm of despair that reigns over the lives of so many? I can’t; I simply can’t. Tennyson said it best, “I am a part of all that I have met…” I am a part of all that I have met: the sheepish grin of the boy in the rickshaw beside ours, the depth behind onyx-colored eyes of a girl following her mother into the Hanuman temple, the gut-wrenching desolation of a legless beggar scooting himself across bare asphalt in 120˚F temperatures. Ignorance is generally an acceptable excuse for inaction, but I am no longer ignorant. This place soaked through my bones into my very soul, and now I must change accordingly. I don’t know what that change will entail – after all, I haven’t even been here two weeks – but I do know that a changed spirit will return in this body. The margin of Tennyson’s untraveled worlds is fading. Hope glitters fiercely in the polluted atmosphere, baring its teeth at the darkness that surrounds and presses close. Evading the clutches of despair and despondency, it seeps into every welcoming nook and cranny. As I walk these streets and attempt to find peace among the chaos and clamor, a sense of anticipation rises within and around me. Slowly, hope has been making its way behind enemy lines, and now it is ready to burst forth in stunning ambush against the wretched darkness that has ruled for so long. Talking with the family that I traveled with, I whispered in full confidence, “It’s coming; it’s coming; it’s coming.” Each day it gathers strength, some days more than others. Victory is certain, but that doesn’t diminish the difficulty of battle. For now, darkness still rules. But not for long; no, not for long.
