red-light pain

A couple nights a go, I prayer-walked through the red-light district here in Chiang Mai. It is a deeply, profoundly sad place. I felt God's heart so mournful there. Girls, some surely the same age as me, skirts a hand-span length, made-up as symbols of sex and pleasure. Lonely, old, white men, looking to a fallen Eve to satisfy a never-ending, life-long hunger, wearing lust like a second skin. Worst of all, they all seem to act like it's completely normal, simple fun and games, and 'why the heck are you looking at me with pain in your face'? It looks like they really believe this is where life is: in loud, twinkly-lit shacks along Loi Kroh Road. I feel so far from Eden, so baffled at how our sins have barely changed since that first fateful taste.

As I walked along, I came across yet another beggar. There are many here, and those of you I've emailed will know I have been struggling as to how God wants me to respond to them. This beggar was a man, with a small child, sitting on a bridge. As I passed, he called to me in a voice that broke my heart more than I can express. I kept walking as tears of divine pain filled my eyes. It was as though the hurt and brokenness of that whole, long street had just spoken to me; the depth of all that excruciating desire, all the shame, all the emotional poverty, all the aimless and countless stabs at what promises to be an answer, all those years and lives of sin and hopelessness - in one, desperate voice. "Help me."

I went back to him about an hour later, and gave him a tract and some money. He looked at me like I was Jesus Himself. The gratefulness in his eyes, the adoration, the reverence as if I was a holy being, come to give him all he's ever wanted. But I might as well have given him nothing. The money will be gone, the tract most likely cast aside, and he'll be back to that street, night after night, long after I have returned to my abundant world.

I wonder how God restrains Himself. How does He let these creatures He has formed with His very hands, these small, fragile beings He loves more than we can fathom, how does He let them go on dying deaths of despair everyday. I know He could come, and in one second, heal this whole world, every soul, every disease, every need. 

"...'Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." 

- Luke 6:20-21

May the Lord burden your soul. May you be overcome with pain and sorrow. May you be as Job and lose all you have. May you never eat another morsel. May you hunger until your last breath, for you are working, waiting, living, dying for a heavenly country.