The Harvest is Great

Last Sunday night, we went to sleep to the sound of booming music and screaming. A new house in our village was being dedicated to the spirits. Most people here, actually have animism (spirit worship) mixed in with their Buddhism. I was tired enough to drift off to sleep, but later woke up, hearing a drunk neighbor shouting "Hey!" He sounded mad, and I laid there awake for a long time, somewhat scared and praying. This isn't the first time we've heard loud music and drunk people around us, but somehow this night experience really has lingered in my mind. The lostness of these people is continuing to be impressed upon me.

Sometimes I forget, on quiet days when the only sounds I hear are "Grandma" hollering "Bye nye!" (where are you going?) to every person who drives past or Dteep saying "Hi!", calling her cows as she leads them out to pasture in the early morning light. When an old man rides by,  his perfect posture making him look like so respectable even on a bicycle, when children laugh and play in our yard, when neighbor women laugh and turkeys gobble and you can't tell if you heard the turkeys or the women...

Thailand has become synonymous in the tourist world with laughter, smiles, and fun. Yes, you will see many more smiling faces here than in America. But the smiles hide a thousand sorrows. The laughter and "sanook sanook" (fun fun) mentality have become an age old strategy of covering the inner pain.

Go ask the woman whose boyfriend cheated on her, whose father died of alcoholism, now she says to me, "If I searched all over this world, I wonder if I could find a good man."

Go ask the man, covered with tattoos, hooked on sniffing glue, his wife long fled from him, now wandering our streets in search of easy money to get his next high.

Go ask the girl in the bars of Chiang Mai, whose father sold her so he could get a refrigerator, and now her father's god of money has become her own.

Go ask about peace, and hope. Go ask and see the aching void within.

Look up to Jesus, His tears falling gentle upon them, watering the soil of the heart, waiting for someone to go and let His love flow.

"The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send out more workers for His fields."                        Matthew 9:37-38