Darshan Snapshots

Here are some journal excerpts from my trip this summer:

New Jersey:
“We interviewed a man in New Jersey, who was trying to endear us to Hinduism... even using Christian terminology. We asked if there was forgiveness... he responded, "Oh, yes! God has an everest of patience", then continued into a confusingly wordy explanation, which... when thought through carefully, revealed that by saying "yes" he merely meant that people can get many tries and many lifetimes to get it right, but one always receives punishment, always pays for sin. There was no mercy, as I understand it anyway. Even just hearing his explanation makes me sigh with defeat -- the last thing I'd want is innumerable "tries". Failure is quite attractive in light of mercy."

Varanasi:
"The afternoon after our sunrise boat ride on the Ganga, I read over several statements from Jesus like, "I will not leave you desolate" and was struck by the contrast I was seeing... and all that we don't have to do to please God... "open the door" -- you can't get much simpler than that! Over the next couple weeks, the more I learned about Hinduism, esp. the various gods and goddesses -- the more awestruck I became with Jesus. I saw Him more beautiful, more loving, and more generous than before. Hearing Munnu contrast the character of Jesus with his own Hindu gods was striking too. And seeing Anita's glowing face as she shared about finding Jesus -- I saw more and more how attractive Jesus is. And, Hindus, who often live so devoted to gods who are not loving and generous like Jesus, can appreciate His character perhaps more than I, who knew him at such an early age. I remember having similar thoughts about Hinduism -- just before coming to Nepal the 1st time. I had been feeling down and a bit confused, and was begging God to help me... He responded by saying, 'I will help you... but first consider that you are about to encounter people who, like you now, pray for help -- only they have millions of gods who will never hear them and respond like I'm about to respond to you.' My self-pity melted into compassion... esp. when I considered how minor and brief my disturbance had been in comparison to the daily suffering of many in India or Nepal. We are not grateful enough for compassion and forgiveness.”

"One thing that's also struck me over the last couple days... was a temple we visited. It was a temple to Vishnu, essencially, and most of it was filled with scenes from the Ramayana (the great Hindu epic about Ram - who's an incarnation of Vishnu). In part of the temple, you paid to walk through an almost Disneyland-like display of the story... huge scenes, the size of a room, with moving figures, depicting parts of the story. It was pretty impressive. At one scene we were asking our teacher about different characters and he didn't know the answer... then he said, "this little girl would know"... referring to the 7-10 yr.old girl next to us. Sure enough, he asked her... and with great excitement she shared with us about the story. I don't know exactly what she said because it was in Hindi, but watching her face light up... one could tell that this story was deeply a part of her life. She also helped us identify several images of deities on a wall in a different part of the temple. I gave her some candy as we were leaving, to say "thanks"... she was thrilled. I thought about her and about that story the rest of the day. When I was at that seminar in SF, someone spoke about the Ramayana and how it has been told in every art form imaginable in India and throughout other parts of SE Asia... then stated, "what if this story was the gospel?". "

“Some common brand names here in India:for mineral water - ‘YES!’ and for toilet paper - ‘Must’”[If you've been to Asia, you'll appreciate the irony.]

London:
"We just came from visiting with Brian's language tutors... it was a pretty interesting day. The family was curious about us and excited that we wanted to know about their culture. Some of us spent the evening talking with the second son. He said that he'd never met Christians so open minded and that his impression of what Christians believe is 'you don't have to be good -- just believe in Jesus or you're going to Hell." From there we were able to share in depth about what the Bible teaches about salvation. He was very open and very interested. I think Brian was quite surprized (and a bit nervous) when he overheard bits of our conversation. He spent much of the night trying to distract the rest of the family."