Grace of God.

For three and a half months I traveled through Pakistan, preaching the Gospel everywhere I went, and it was hard, every step was difficult and every action had a consequence, every day the Lord had to renew my strength. Jesus is indeed faithful and every day my strength was renewed and I was given a new zeal to do His work each day; one of the harder things I did was go to these rural villages and preach the Gospel, they were far away and hard to get to. Many times, I went to different villages preaching the good news and every new village carried its own heaviness, the everyday reality of these places is that of despair and hopelessness, many of these communities lack clean drinking water and a lot of the children know only a diet of flour, cabbage and rice, basic cleanliness practices are not practiced which leads to many health problems and death from easily fixed problems. The hardest realities of these communities are the sexually assaults and physical abuse, the age of the person does not matter people of all ages and gender suffer these atrocities. It was not at all unusual to encounter child brides, most of whom are married off to men who are decades older. At the end of every day, I would return to where I would stay, at an orphanage, I would be reminded every night of the hardships of this world as many of these children had endured the very hardships previously mentioned. As you can imagine these revelations caused me great distress and made it difficult for me to present the Gospel, these adults in front of me were likely the very people causing the harm I was distressed about, often times only the women and children would come with the only men in attendance being the elders of the communities, I would often preach in the middle of the village so that the message could be heard even by those who chose to stay inside.

 I was at the last village scheduled before I was set to return home, this particular time of presenting the Gospel went well as the whole village was questioning who is it that could be raised from the dead (they had never heard this), the whole time I was preaching I noticed a man laying on a bed not too far off, he was blind and very sick, but I could tell he was paying attention. Every time we would enter a new village, we would bring a feast of food, and I would make it a point to serve the food myself, I would fix a plate and then someone would take that plate to a group or an individual to eat. I had finished making the last plate and was looking around to make sure everyone had food, as I was scanning around, I looked and behind me noticed that the blind bedridden man did not have any food, so I asked why he had no food, the response I got was that he was a sinner, the worst kind and he did not deserve food or salvation, they said that none of them would bring him the food and that I should not either. In that moment I was presented a choice, if I choose too not bring the man food no one would judge me in fact they would say I was doing the right thing, but if I choose to take him the food, they will think less of me, to lower myself to extend kindness to such a man. I had just gotten done speaking for 45 minutes on the grace extended to us by Jesus, about how we did not deserve salvation nor could we do anything to earn it, I spoke about how Jesus lowed himself to come and save us "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin....", I do not know for sure what the sin is that the villagers were referring to but what I do know is that God is the judge and He will make all things well, no one, no matter the sin is too far that Jesus cannot get. So, I grabbed a plate, filled it with food and made my way over to him, as I approached, I got a better look at this man, and I was filled with compassion as he truly was in bad health; I handed him the plate full of food, he acted surprised like this did not happen often, I said God bless you and walked away, as I returned to the main group, I thought they would think less of me and no longer be responsive to the message preached, but I was wrong it was not judgment but conviction, not only had the message of grace been preached but it was also displayed right in front of their eyes.

We were all once that sinner on that bed underserving and unworthy of such grace, it was by the grace of God someone fed me when no one else would. That blind man on that bed gave his life to Jesus and many from that village also gave their life to Jesus, the grace of God was given to him just like that grace was given to me.