Complicated Hope

December, 18, 2017

This is my view this morning. I am sitting on a 7th floor balcony porch in Phnom Phen, Cambodia at 5:07 in the morning. The sunbeams have yet to reach our side of the building and the wind is rather chilly. Especially for Southeast Asia! In the distance, the cars and motos can be heard along the main roads, tooting their horns as they weave a traffic pattern that scars any western driver in to being thankful for grid-lock. But our neighborhood streets are quiet. I have seen the lights of only one moto this morning. And the most prevalent sound are dogs and the crow of roosters. As the sky lightens, the noise increases as if only parallel control knobs.

This is my third morning here. And I have come to embrace the smells and sounds and tastes of new country. Mostly, I have come to love a people whose recent past is riddled with genocide and pain. They are in the first generational steps of recovery – it is only 30 years since one-half of their country was murdered, not by an outsider, but by their own countrymen. Not because of race or religion – but merely for power.

There is a thriving Christian community in Phnom Phen, Cambodia. In a country where the lives of children and women have become disposable, there are in-country Christian ministries working to restore dignity and bring the hope of Jesus Christ to a people who struggle for daily survival. They have looked to religion for hope. They have looked to government to Hope. They have found their only Hope is in Jesus Christ.

Where do you place your hope? Your job? Your community? Your church?

What if they were all gone tomorrow? What if you found yourself sitting alone, in your home with no family or friends, surrounded by only your possessions, where would your hope lay?

No one knows your story – what has brought you to this place and moment in time. Only the Almighty God knows your heart – it’s brokenness, its longing, it’s searching.

Only Jesus can bring you Hope.

The happiest people I have ever met have one piece of knowledge in common – they know that this life is just the doorway to eternity. What lays beyond the veil of death is our Eternal Life. They have grasped the truth that what they do in this lifetime matters for eternity.

Do you know this Hope?

Salvation is simple. We make it complicated.