Off to India

I’m getting ready to pack my bags and head out on a three-week trip to India and Nepal to minister with BEE World’s Women’s Ministry. We’ll be visiting three different locations and teaching/facilitating three different sets of curriculum. Lots of plane rides and bus rides and car rides…lots of new sights, new sounds, new smells, and of course new people to meet. The experience will be quite different from Africa, I think. For one thing, BEE tells me that very few people wear western dress so along with preparing for my teaching time, I’m also trying to find a couple of Salwar and Kameez outfits!

I am so excited about this trip. I love to travel and I love to experience other cultures. Of course, culture is a product of thousands of years of people groups living together, developing cultural habits and traditions and ways of thinking, and worshiping their God or gods. But God is sovereign and He is a God of creativity and variety, so culture is more than simple anthropology. He has sovereignly given each culture a special way of displaying His glory. No one culture could reflect all of God, and no one culture can praise Him sufficiently. When we actually see the great multitude praising God as described in Revelation 7, we will see that every nation, tribe, people, and language will be there adding their unique flavor and essence to the song that rises to God’s throne! Only when all of God’s people are included can it be complete.

But in the here and now, cultures can be a problem. How do you communicate in a culture that is so different from your own? How do you talk about the wonderful justice of God to women who have lived with injustice their whole life and perhaps don’t even understand what the word "justice" means?  Forget about “insignificant” cultural differences like materialism vs. rural village life. How do you express God’s love to women who have grown up in a culture where a woman’s status is described as "lower than the sole of her husband’s sandal?"

And so these final weeks as I prepare, I am asking God to use me to serve the needs of the women of India and Nepal. I know that I can never understand their culture enough to be able to mold my teaching to their culture perfectly. But I also know that God wrote His Holy Scriptures knowing each culture completely. And I know that He created all of His children in a way that each can accept his Word and His truth. So just as we will be relying on translators to translate our words into their language so that they can understand what we are saying, I am also depending on the Holy Spirit to translate the truth of the Scriptures through their cultural filter and into their hearts. And then I am asking that God will show me, moment by moment if that is what it takes, what the best way is to share with our sisters in India and Nepal. Isn't living dependently a wonderful thing?!?