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By Meredith Holmes
SIX of us crowded around a two-foot hole, holding broken shovels and pickaxes,
as our leader told us how to plant a banana tree.
Unfortunately, you couldn’t just drop it in and pile dirt around it. In a couple of days, the poor tree
would wither to nothing. It needed nutrients and water.
Therefore, you started by filling the hole with rotten banana leaves, compost
and manure. Then you planted the tree. It smelled worse than my brother’s hockey gear.
I was planting trees in rural India, during a two-week missions trip. There were
10 of us – two from Capernwray Quebec and the rest of us from Capernwray Harbour in B.C.
Capernwray schools strive to show college-age students what it means to let
Christ live through them. This missions trip was an opportunity for us to do
just that. We also went to be an encouragement to the Christians at Share the
Word Ministries Bible school in Bangalore.
The entire time we were there, I saw the desperate need the Indian people have
for Jesus. They are like banana trees – planted too far from the water source. The result is people trying to grow on
their own – an impossibility. They could ask Jesus to become their source of water, to
become their life – but so many of them don’t. However, they do acknowledge their need for salvation.
Devout Hindus live desperate lives of fear, trying to appease their different
gods. Throughout their lives, they strive to reach God through chants and
meditations. They try to earn their salvation by becoming good.
Yet no one can define this good; so they live in fear, reaching toward an
unknown height. It renders them hopeless.
Through these chants and good works, they think to transform themselves. Once
transformed, they believe they have earned God’s favour to receive a better body in the next life. And if they manage to live a
good enough life, they believe they can escape the reincarnation cycle to be
with God.
It’s a backwards way of living, like expecting a banana tree to earn water. Yet
doesn’t the tree need to be watered before it can grow? These people cannot be
transformed until Jesus comes into their lives.
My team, driving down the street in taxis or vans, would see temple after temple
dedicated to different idols. At each one, my heart broke a little more. Some
of them were very elaborate, even gaudy; but many were simple roadside shacks.
All of them represented humanity’s hopeless search for God. It represented people working so hard, only to fail.
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How I wished they would come to know the truth, and accept what God has freely
given. So I rejoiced whenever I saw Christ in India. He is not bound to North
America; and though many hearts in India are hardened toward him, I saw his
life shine through many others.
We partook in a church service in Kilkotigaree, a small village in the
mountains. The people there shone with love for Christ.
There were no instruments in the church; but as the pastor began to sing, the
whole room filled with the voices of the tiny congregation.
It was chaotic and out of tune, and no one clapped to the same rhythm. But it
was joyful. The congregation knew they had been set free. They sang with the
joy they had been given by Christ.
I found I could join with their praise and thanksgiving, though I didn’t understand a word of their language. I was united with them, through our love
for the Lord who gave us salvation.
In a desperate world of darkness where people strive to grow without water,
those who know Jesus come together as one body.
Although we come from different ends of the world and opposite cultures, we
reach to the lost as one – offering them living water.
July 2009
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