Back from Myanmar...sort of

I'm in Bangkok, in a hotel room waiting to go to bed so I can get up less than six hours from now. We arrived from Myanmar this afternoon. After the in and out, very slow internet we had there, the connection seems to fly here in Thailand!

I was able to get on this blog page one time in Myanmar, while I was at Yangon, thus the two posts from Nov. 26. The next time I was able to link to my blog from the Rose Creek Village home page, but I was not able to post on it. After that, I couldn't even go to it. Their "filter" system is very effective over there.

Kalaymyo, Myanmar was my favorite place I have ever visited. I loved the town, and the people were as nice as I've found them to be in all poor countries. Kalaymyo, or Kalemyo or Kalay Myo means "a city surrounded by four mountains, one on each side" according to one of our translators there. I told him that's a lot of meaning for three syllables. After he had told me that Myo is the part that means city, I asked him if Kalay basically meant "diamond," and he said yes. I found that exact translations were as hard to come by in Myanmar as they are in Africa.

Some things that stood out: people wearing sweaters, jackets, and even coats because the temperature dropped into the 70's; people wearing scarves and winter hats when they rode their bikes in the mornings with the temp in the 60's; lighters hanging on string from the ceiling in restaurants so people could light their cigarettes; restaurants with no walls and dirt floors with all the food cooked over a fire; people who had never ridden in a car in their lives; and the orphans...

The orphans are why we went over there, of course. We were wanting to see the work of Heaven's Family, and they support a lot of orphans in Myanmar. Noah, Chashaq, Chasah, and I went with eleven people, four of them from David Servant's family, who run Orphan's Tear, the branch of Heaven's Family that takes care of orphans. The people were wonderful, hard-working, and they loved God. It was a blessing to be with them. Ok, back to the orphans.

It was awesome to see all the happy children, none of whom even have beds and some of whom get only one meal a day. Orphan's Tear, despite sending thousands of dollars to Myanmar every month, has not raised enough to sponsor all the orphans in the few orphanages they are aware of and can help. If you think it's awful that a child should be eating one meal a day in an orphanage, you might want to sign up to sponsor a couple orphans, which will raise the standard of living of the whole orphanage. Just go to http://www.orphanstear.org, or you can sponsor children through Mercy Homes in India, which we have also visited. In both cases, ALL your money will get to the orphanage.

Anyway, we learned--once more--that money really can't buy happiness. The fact is, those orphans are significantly happier than American children and more secure. Admittedly, they wouldn't be if they were alone and starving, as many were before being brought to the orphanage, but they are happy and grateful now just for a subsistence living and balloons to play with at Christmastime. We brought a soccer ball to an orphanage with 90 children, and they all cheered when we tossed them the ball. 90 children, and there was no money for just one soccer ball. Yet the children were happy, and they had prepared for our coming by learning songs and dances, including a very impressive bamboo pole dance. It was awesome to watch a small boy conducting the other children as they sang. He was good!

Chashaq and I watched the gratefulness of the children and the love and self-sacrifice of the missionaries who take care of them while devoting their lives to the Gospel, and we were ashamed of our American ways. We discussed it several times, talking about what it would be like to be a real Christian like the people we were meeting.

Coming back from one of the orphanages one day, something came up about heaven. I told the several people in the back of the truck with me that if God let a rich slob like me into heaven, it would reflect badly on God. I told them I figured it was a waste of time for me to worry about heaven; I just want to get busy helping the people who really are worthy to go to heaven with the work they're doing, and that would be enough for me.

I know, I know...none of us are worthy. Bull! Read Rev. 3:4,5. Some are worthy, some aren't, and the unworthy won't make it.

Sorry, I didn't write the rules, I just tell people about them.

Everyone in the back of the truck agreed. I told them that the people the Bible says entered heaven were surprised they were going there, anyway. When Jesus told them they were going to heaven and why, they asked him what he was talking about (Matt. 25:31-46). I told them if we were actually busy helping, we might end up real Christians after all. Chashaq said it was the best sermon I ever preached.

I could give a good, solid Bible lesson about how none of that is good theology, but let me give you some things to think about. When we talked about being rich, fat Americans with no right to enter the kingdom of heaven, we were thinking about things like hanging out in Burger King overeating, or indulging in our "right" as Americans to $40 meals that could feed three hungry children for a month. I mean, hey, those terrible sinners who smoke and damage their "temples of the Holy Spirit" can be written off as carnal, but fat preachers polishing off dessert after a steak are spiritual.

It's not that kind of thing that makes me wonder if I'm a real Christian. What I ask God is if I'll go back to America, then slowly forget about what I've seen and decide "I deserve a break today." It's happened before. Thank God for all the wonderful and real Christians who don't slip into the American Way. They're rare. It was Jesus who said that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. If you eat three meals a day, and you know you'll eat three meals a day tomorrow no matter what, you're rich, my friend, and your satisfaction and wealth are a risk to your soul. It'd be easier to run a rope through the eye of a needle than for you to go to heaven. Yes, you.

Jesus doesn't leave it at that. What's impossible with man is possible with God, you know. What makes it possible, asking Jesus into your heart? Do you really think it's hard for a rich man to ask Jesus into his heart? Heck, no, it's impossible for a rich man to call nothing his own and share and be generous. It's so impossible that the rich, young ruler couldn't do it when Jesus asked him to. It's so impossible that you, the average American Christian, can't even believe Jesus told you to do it, much less actually do it. He only told the rich young ruler to do that, right? No, my friend, he said that to us all. Look at Luke 12:33.

Then, when you're done, look at the next verse, too. I'm telling you that America's treasures steal my heart away from God all the time.

Should every trip to a restaurant be foregone and the money sent to help the poor or shared with a more needy brother? Maybe not. Of course, how many trips to a restaurant have you foregone for the needy? How many meals have you skipped and spent the saved money on those with nothing to eat? How many meals have you cut back on, "suffering" through a meal of rice and beans or bread and water--a meal that others, some of them that you claim are your brothers and sisters in Christ, beg and grovel for, but which you consider difficult to bear--how many times have you cut back to such a meal and given the shared money to a good cause? In the early church, it was standard for all Christians to do that during daylight hours every Wednesday and Friday. The Jews did it, too, but on different days.

Now you may consider what I just said harsh; I don't know, but I'm not talking to you, anyway. I'm talking to me. May God give me the amazing, miraculous grace that would allow a rich American like myself to be a real Christian. I consider eating three meals a day of beans and rice to be suffering, too. Shoot, I get disappointed when I have one such meal a week. It's "hard" for me when there's no cereal or nuts in the house to snack on before I go to bed.

Again, I don't think the occasional snack is a sin. I don't think eating Thanksgiving dinner and walking away gorged is a sin. I think the American lifestyle is sinful. Rich Americans don't know any better. Christians ought to. It would be awesome to be a real Christian. Chashaq had a picture taken of him and me so that he can put it up in his house to remind him that we're going to try to actually be Christians when we get back to the states.

It'll take a miracle.