Travel light: Kathmandu ... and Baltimore

“He forgives all your sin; He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the Pit; He crowns you with love and faithful compassion.”  Psalm 103:3-4

I’ve posted a lot about Kathmandu this week — and nothing about Baltimore.

 As a Christian worker who has walked the streets of Kathmandu and met its people, I desperately want the people of Nepal to know God’s love. I feel I can at least help Americans understand that buried under the rubble of last Saturday’s earthquake is a city full of life and fun and color — whose people desperately need Jesus.

As a white Southern suburbanite woman, I desperately want racial reconciliation in the United States. I also realize I have little credibility speaking into race relations in America, even though my heart breaks for Baltimore … and New York … and Ferguson, Missouri, as much as it breaks for Kathmandu.

Anne Lamott wrote on Facebook this week, “How … can one week include Nepal, and Baltimore? If anyone mentions ‘mysterious ways,’ or ‘to every season,’ I will just lose my mind.”

I tend to agree with her. The world turned upside down in more ways than one last week, reminding me of one stark reality:

We desperately need a Savior. Without Him, we are one quake from being covered up, one breath from anarchy, one step from complete annihilation.

As I read Psalm 103 in light of last week’s events, I thanked God that “He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our offenses … For He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust” (10, 14, HCSB).  

In weeks like last week, I don't have a lot of answers, but I do have hope. Toward the end of the week we saw disaster relief teams begin to make headway in Nepal. Baltimore officials acted quickly to determine Freddie Gray’s cause of death and indict those responsible.

By God’s grace, the world began to right itself … again.

“As for man, his days are like grass — he blooms like a flower of the field … But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear Him, and His righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep His covenant, who remember to observe His precepts” (17-18, HCSB).

God’s faithful love astounds me, during weeks like last week when the world spins out of control and in the day-to-day when I realize yet again just how fragile we all are.

“Praise the Lord, all His works in all the places where He rules. My soul, praise Yahweh!”

God’s faithful love astounds me.

#travellight

This week’s reading: 1 Chronicles 11-16, 2 Samuel 5:1-6:23, Psalm 1-2, 15, 22-24, 47, 68, 89, 96, 100-107, 132
Post #18: Discovering how to live missionally through a chronological reading of God's Word.