For two months I have lived in a big, hot, crowded country in South Asia.

I moved here with my husband because he has a fire in his heart to help sow the gospel in new places, and prays that it blooms bright and bold into house-churches as numerous as hardy tropical plants.

We brought our two children – a preschooler and a toddler – because we believe that the Creator God called us as a whole family, to dream and to live out this going-to-the-ends-of-the-earth story together.  And that he has a plan for them too in this land of cobras and infectious diseases and more trash than I have ever seen.

We didn’t move to South Asia because we are brave or spiritual or humble.  We came, in fear and trembling, because we have this Good News story to tell and because, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that God is very, very big.

We are weak, but, in some mysterious way, he likes weak people.  His grace is enough for us.

As if to emphasize the point, our first two months have been brimming-over with our neediness.  With my neediness.

The other night I lay in my darkened bedroom and cried out to God, “I need your help.” This is the most common form my prayers take right now.

In these trying-to-survive days in a strange, dusty new world, I am filled with doubts and temptations I have never faced before.  I grow irritated and unable get along with my husband or to live through one hour without exploding at my children.

I stare at my Bible – when I take time to open it – and the words run together and I am distracted and bored.  I get angry with the head-jarring noise of this big city and with the electricity that cuts off mid-laundry load and with having to fill our milk pitcher from dirty bags every day.

I am swallowed up with guilt over the poverty that is all around me and over how much we have, and how much it takes to make me happy.  I am questioning a God who would give me so much and them so little.

I am scared. Scared of the unknowns in my future.  Scared of growing hard-hearted and cynical and away from God in these trials.

Today in the gospel of Mark I read about Blind Bartimaeus.   Bartimaeus, who sat in the squalor of a bustling roadside, like the one outside my apartment walls, one of a host of needy beggars.  And there was Jesus, who was on a fixed mission to go pay for the sins of a whole world of needy beggars, who stopped in his tracks and noticed Bartimaeus.

The pressing-in onlookers become eyes for this sightless man, “Take heart.  Get up; he is calling you.”

And his heart leapt. “And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to meet Jesus.”  He told Jesus what he wanted.  And he was healed, broken body and broken soul.

Today my own broken, homesick heart takes comfort in this story.  It leaps with Bartimaeus when I hear, “Take heart.  Get up; he is calling you.” He notices me, one small person in a sea of humanity in a huge city.  He notices me in all my tiredness and irritability and prayerlessness.  He notices me and he notices the blind beggars living in shanties down the street, and he came to earth for all of us.

And my soul throws off its cloak and runs to meet Jesus.

He is making all things new.

By Julie Gentino

{Julie lives in a creative access country and her blog is password-protected for security.  If you drop her an email at jgentino@gmail.com, she would love to share it with you!}

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