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Written by a Cafe 1040 Graduate
Ramshackle homes and ruddy farmers zipped past us on all sides as my friend James guided his trusty motorbike masterfully through the dusty village roads. This was my first real trip outside the bustling city since my arrival a few weeks earlier and the fresh, clean air of the countryside was filling me with excitement and optimism, so much so that I almost forgot how terrifying it is to ride on the back of a motorbike. Almost.
After flying through a few more suburbs and rice paddies, James finally brought his bike to a stop at the top of a dusty hill in the center of our destination: a massive graveyard. In an attempt to position myself as a learner and observer in the culture, I had asked him to bring me to this spot after I had heard it mentioned as one of the largest burial grounds in the area, knowing that it would likely lead me to a greater understanding of the ancestor worship so widely practiced across the nation. It certainly did, but as I stood in the heat of the day and gazed out over an endless field of mausoleums littered with still-burning sticks of incense and futile offerings of food and flowers, I was struck by something much more powerful than cultural knowledge.
With the heavy silence of the dead pressing in on me a thought, unwanted but inescapable, began to slowly make itself heard in my mind until I had formed it into one heart-wrenching, prayerful question: God, how many of these people died without ever hearing the name of Jesus? How many more will die and be buried here with the same fate?
The thousands of tombs around me represented a small portion of the millions of people in the country, and the billions outside of it, who live in the darkness of empty religion and the mist of false promises. All of them are headed for the same grave fate. I had never felt the crushing weight of lost souls dying as much as I did that hot afternoon.
In moments such as that, it can be easy for hope to falter. When the heavy shadow of eternal separation from God hangs over the unreached, the task of spreading the good news of Christ to the world rises to its full height, and your insufficiency to change the worldview of an entire culture becomes vividly clear, the confidence and positivity that draws many into international missions work can begin to crumble. At least, it did for me. I can recall several dark nights during my internship in Southeast Asia when I found myself alone on the floor of my apartment crying out to God to save my local friends from the lies that they believed after seeing little fruit in my attempts to tell them about a man named Jesus. It seemed the people I knew were headed for the same silent graves I had seen on that hilltop and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It felt like I lost hope, and that was good because the hope I had in myself wasn’t really hope at all.
The reason, I think, that it’s so hard for many of us to find hope is that so often our hope is anchored in the wrong sources. For me during the beginning of my time overseas with Cafe 1040, I had anchored it in my own ability. I had arrived off the plane with the false conclusion that somehow, I, a young, inexperienced, sweaty guy with a memorized five-minute, four-point Gospel presentation, was in large part the hope of an entire nation. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but I don’t think I’m the only one who slips into thinking that way. Our pride often masks itself with good intentions, and so God sometimes finds it necessary to remind us of our inadequacy. For me, he did it with a graveyard, and that has changed where I put my hope forever.
From those pits of despair and hopelessness, God graciously responded with the exact message I needed to hear, “You are not capable of any of this, but I AM.” In other words, God was reminding me that hope, true hope, is only found in one thing: Him. He alone has the power, the authority, and the wisdom necessary to turn individuals and entire nations into God-honoring, hope-filled followers of Christ. We don’t, and that makes all the difference in the way we view our role in spreading the good news. Now, when I remember that graveyard, I am still struck with sadness at the loss of so many souls (and, I believe, rightly so), but my hope remains unshaken. I know God is capable of prevailing even in the darkest corners of this lost world, and with that in mind, though I may sometimes waver, I am determined to dedicate my life to being a part of His unstoppable plan wherever it might take me.
So when our false hope in ourselves leads us to see only tombs, we must turn our hope toward God, an empty tomb, and a guaranteed promise for the nations that makes our hope unshakeable.
