By Gene Yaussy
BANGLADESH — She sits next to me with virtually all her earthly possessions on her frail body. Her weak voice tells of a husband’s death, a son’s desertion, and a daughter’s distance. She has come to speak with the people who gave her hope.
She shares the atrocities of her life with calm resolve and acceptance. She has virtually no food and no means of providing for herself. The community she lives in offers her no help because she has denied their religion and believed in Jesus to save her from the death of her sin. This faith has brought her the security of a future with her Lord. Beyond her faith she has nothing. She is reduced to a few articles of clothing and a shelter for a home. She is more than 80 years old and knows that she will soon die. She could renounce her faith and be welcomed back into society, be reunited with her son, and receive proper care in the final years of her life.
She cannot read and has no Bible to go to for encouragement. She has only the simple faith that was taught to her many years ago by faithful servants of God. I imagine that as she sits in her home over the next months, as her food diminishes, her body weakens, and her life slips away that her Lord will whisper something in her ears that I will never hear because I have never trusted Him like this. She has something far more valuable than the money for food, clothing, anything. She has the whisper of God.
Tonight she will return to her village home. She will go there joyful that she has had one last opportunity to see her spiritual parents. The next time they are together will be in the glories of heaven. Now she will return to the shelter she calls home and wait. She will wait until the food is gone. She will wait because that is all she can do. She knows God’s promise of salvation and now without words she will testify to the community around her that her faith is more important to her than life itself.
Can you see her? Can you imagine the shelter where she is sleeping? Can you imagine the hunger pains and the sickness she will endure over the remaining months or years of her life? Now, can you imagine the comfort that our Lord is giving her? Every time someone derides her faith and scoffs at her condition God is there speaking to her with words that cannot be uttered. He is holding her with arms that cannot be seen. He is covering her better than any clothing and protecting her better than any home.
Her faith is strong because it is the only thing she has. Her testimony is strong because she values it more than life itself. Her legacy of faith will speak to generations. She will die with nothing except that which is everything. Tonight I will go to sleep to the sounds of my iPod but she may be listening to the chorus of the saints.
There are millions of people here in Bangladesh who have never had the opportunity to hear about this wonderful faith. Although IMB representatives Tom and Gloria Thurman served here for 35 years and saw this woman come to faith there are still more that need to hear. They would rather their names not mentioned here, but were it not for them I would not be here. It is my desire that through this story that you are moved to greater involvement in the lives of the peoples of Bangladesh. Today, please say a prayer for this woman, for the Thurmans, for me, and for the place God would have you serve in reaching the peoples of Bangladesh with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Can you hear God’s whisper?
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Gene Yaussy is an IMB representative in Bangladesh.
The most difficult thing is deciding how to respond to these hungry and hurting people. In this country, it can be difficult to separate the genuinely needy from those who are forced to beg on the streets under someone else’s control. Many of the beggars probably do not get to keep the money they are given, but are instead obliged to hand it over to another.
