My Thoughts in Calcutta

As I write this I am sitting in a hotel room in Calcutta, India. There is no internet connection but I have so many thoughts running through my head that I just need to write. I’m sure I will post this on my blog eventually once we get settled in Guwahati with internet access. Since we left Canada almost a week ago I have experienced an almost overwhelming sense of “what have I gotten myself into??” I guess this feeling started even before I had left. Last night this feeling reached a climax. I was tired, really tired. I was tired when this journey began and after an incredible but busy weekend in Hong Kong I was even more tired. Being delayed in Bangkok added to the mounting weariness. On the plane to Calcutta I was seated near an interesting Indian family. I am an observant person especially when it comes to people. I spent the majority of the flight watching this family and how they interacted with each other and how they interacted with the flight attendants and the passengers around them. As I watched them I really began to wonder what the Indian people would be like and if the way this family behaved was what I had to look forward to for the next five months. “What have I gotten myself into?” I asked myself for maybe the hundredth time. Arriving in the Calcutta International Airport I asked myself the question for the hundredth and first time. After we had collected our baggage and were about to make our way through customs I heard ten year old Andrew say to Ellen, “I don’t want to go out there, I don’t want to go into that outside world of Calcutta.” Not exactly words to reassure my doubting heart and I asked myself again now maybe for the hundredth and twentieth time, “what have I gotten myself into??” There wasn’t much to see during the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel as it was already after midnight local time and was very dark. I think this left me even more anxious and apprehensive. I went to sleep last night with a sense of dread hanging over me. I felt weak. Like I had told God I would do something only to realize now that it was too much for me. I want to just make the excuse that my exhaustion was the reason for my lack of trust in Him and that would be easy to do but I know in my heart of hearts that I still do not have the kind of faith that I need to have, the kind of faith that can move mountains. This morning I woke up with a better feeling about things. After breakfast Ray took me to an internet café a few blocks away to send a quick mass email. It was my first look at India in the light of day. What I saw was exactly what I expected to see, a lot of garbage, a lot of people, a lot rickshaws, bicycles, crazy traffic and cows. The feelings I had were not the feelings I expected to have after the way I had been feeling last night. I can’t really explain it because I loved every sight and every sound. I was simply fascinated by everything. A little later Ray and I ventured out to visit a man named Swami and his wife Violet. Swami leads the Church of Christ here in Calcutta. That outing allowed me to see a little more of the intensity that is Calcutta, and again I was enthralled. When we returned to the hotel I felt like writing some of my thoughts out but instead I got my Bible out. I’m following a schedule in order to read the Bible through in a year. I read yesterdays scheduled reading from Genesis and as I read about Jacob’s dream God’s words to Jacob washed over me. “I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go.” God is speaking to Jacob here but as I read those words God spoke to me exactly what I needed to hear. He is with me here. He goes with me wherever I go, protecting me. I think that I need protection from my own doubting heart more than from anything physical around me. My feelings of weakness are not unwarranted. I am weak and inadequate, it’s true. What I had forgotten somewhere over the last week is that it is God who makes me adequate and strengthens me for the tasks He puts before me. My attitude this afternoon is much different from the one I had last night. Maybe it is partly due to the fact that I am more rested and have been able to see what that “outside world of Calcutta” actually looks like. But I think even more than that is that I have remembered Who it is that I serve and that He is in control.