Global Urban Trek 2008
Thy Will Be DoneAugust 1, 2008
We left Kolkata about a week ago with great sadness and joy. Sadness is almost inevitable as we said goodbye to relationships, places and the life we had been
accustomed to, but we also had great joy knowing that it was a privilege to grace Kolkata with God’s light in us and be graced by God’s work in Kolkata as well.
Once in Bangkok, we found ourselves missing Kolkata terribly. Debriefing was very much difficult for all of us. We were still in mourning and our experiences were so intense that it was hard to unpack them all within the span of 3 or 4 days. We are all overwhelmed with our experiences that it is all tangled together with emotion and without organization. With the grace of God, we were able to slowly release and untangle some of it and ease our anxiety. At debrief, we were mentally alerted and prepared for the reverse culture shock we would experience once we enter the states. We were also informed of many possible reactions we would have, including physical, emotional and spiritual. We were given helpful advices to ease our transition to life in the states well. On that same note, we were also challenged to take back our lessons from the summer and pursue them as well. We were asked to think about what the phrase “live simply so that others may simply live” would mean for our lives and how that would impact the lifestyle we choose.
On our last day we were given a tour of one of the red light districts in Bangkok and we were left speechless with what we saw. As I walked by streets filled with young women waiting to be picked up and their “handlers” aggressively trying to sell them off, not only saddened me but also disgusted me. As we walked by bars where women earned their livelihood with sometimes not even their dignity, I felt powerless. Jesus, you love and died for these women and for the men and women that try to sell them off as well. Jesus, what would this street, bar, place, city look like if you walked its streets and encountered these women as you did the Samaritan woman?
That night, I began to pray with zeal and with urgency. God, your ears are not deaf that it cannot hear and neither has your arm been shortened that it cannot save. Your kingdom belongs to the poor, the sick, and the unloved. As we go back to the states, my earnest prayer is that we may not forget the lessons we learned and the people we met in Kolkata. May they be etched and engraved to our very hearts, so that we may cry out to our God on their behalf. I hope to carry God’s light into Kolkata again and again throughout my life and say, not mine, but let his will be done. But for now, good bye sweet Kolkata.
- Rajee
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