Phnom Penh
It was a smattering of rain in Phnom Penh; drops dropping down on the tin roofs, clack clack goes the sound. A constant pitter-patter of rain, like Forrest Gump in the jungles of Vietnam. Find a spot to get out of the rain and hunker down, cover up. Somehow even the rain was emanating from the ground like a sizzling, steamy, fuzz.
The city (with the exception of the main boulevard with its single stanchioned light tower casting a copper glow) remained in utter darkness. This little street here, like all the others in town, was dark. But there was light visibly emanating from a house down the street. There was a shaft of light protruding into the alley and so I walked to towards the house. I ducked out of the rain and slipped past the front gates. This must be it. Or so at least I made the logical connection that this must be the guesthouse I was looking for.
I walked toward the house and stepped up to the front doors trying to avoid the puddles of water. Upon reaching the acrylic front door that were closed, I clearly saw the inside of the house from outside. It was brightly lit inside, one table on each side of the small room, a lady standing behind a counter at the end of the room. I pushed open the door and walked in, assuming this was it. No other house was so brightly lit.
The thin Chinese woman standing in the back behind the counter did not look up upony entrance. Maybe she did not hear me because of the rain outside. I looked around and the inside was not much different from what I saw on the outside, with the exception of a đŸ“º in the far right corner which I did not previously see. I stood inside for a minute or so wondering if she would respond. Then wondering to myself if I had stepped into the wrong house.
"Hello?" I meekly said, raising my hand and ducking my head.
"Oh. Hi. How can I help you?"
She spoke English.
"I'm checking into a hotel for the night?"
"Oh you're here." She said, as if she was expecting me. Then she looked down at the counter and I approached her, with my backpack dripping wet and slung across my back.
"Yes, we've been waiting for you to arrive."
She proceeded to check me and after we got the particulars settled I put my backpack down and sat down at the table on the right side, a few feet from the TV. It was depressing. Some guy was crawling around a wet field. As if I didn't have enough rain, now I had to sit and see something on TV where someone else was experiencing the same thing I had just walked out of. The sounds of the rain outside amplified the wet, muddy scene in the movie playing on TV .
The guy crawled around for a while.It was a long trek for me to get to this place in Phnom Penh. I was too tired to pay attention and really do anything else but sit and watch what was in front of me. After even more time I wondered… Am I watching the killing fields? It was so depressing. I had just gotten out of this rain. Now I had to fantastically put myself back into this surreal scene. The room was small so there was no avoiding what was showing on TV.
It was the killing fields. I remember seeing the Asian actor's face before as he lifted his face from the ground. There was no killing yet. Maybe he had just escaped it. Maybe he was trudging into it without knowing it. It was depressing. There was no escaping the killing fields. The actual thing had happened in the 70s. But with this movie on, with the rain outside, with the dilapidated boulevard overrun with weeds and a single tower of light in the center that seemed like it was where people were marshaled for who knows what (maybe execution, maybe a 1984 indoctrination style gathering) it didn't matter what year it was right now. I felt like I was right back in the killing fields with that man…
A family eating dinner outside under the lights, cars parked along the curb.
This seems like a normal scene but it's not. When I first arrived in this country years ago this was a far cry to what was actually on the streets. There was the single tower light pole on the main boulevard, overrun with weeds and sparingly trafficked during the day, with patches of weeds worn down as if they once trooped the feet of aimless peasants directed by some equally vapid parade marshall. At night it was completely empty and devoid of life. I wanted to scurry across the boulevard as quick as possible so as not to be caught breaking curfew and then rounded up and bundled to wherever the peasants from the day were sent, the mashed patches of weeds still revealing traces of the last living occupants.
There were no families to be seen outside eating together at that time, day or night. Instead there was a relentless stream of child beggars, carrying toddlers in their arms with their hands outstretched in a cupped đŸ¤² motion. As a tourist you would be approached by a child beggar before you even sat down for dinner. And before you finished your food you would have eight to ten child beggars approaching you, each sequentially in turn.
Where were their mothers? Well, there were plenty of women around… women prostitutes. One on every corner. There was a dearth of electricity in the country and the prostitutes could always be found leaning under whatever few light bulbs where suspended above the street, where some savvy entrepreneur had found the means to string a line from the public power line over to his piece of property/shack.
The city remained mired in darkness, a home to whores and beggars. A place where Jesus would be…
Today, just look at this situation. A mother and father eating dinner with their children under a well lit canopy with proper chairs and couches. On top of that, string lights for aesthetic ambience. It is such a common occurrence today in the first world that we don't think about all the excess energy that is needed to produce this unnecessary light show. Yet is a mark of the economic development of the country and the rewards they enjoy for being pulled out of the economic dumps and darkness. And still, there is a veiled darkness of another kind. The creature comforts which soften our lives and dull our eyes to the sinful past we came from. There is still a need for others to be redeemed from the muck. It is not something we can pull ourself out of by ourselves. Even someone else in the muck currently beside us cannot help to extricate us. It is salvation only a savior from above can provide.
Jesus provides this salvation - here for this world and eternally.
For once we were dead in our trespasses and the sins in which we walked, following the course of this world, following the evil prince of the power of the air and the evil spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. At one point we all lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and by our very nature we were children of suffering and the products of our own wrath. But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love which he has for us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, He made us alive together with Jesus Christ. It is by His grace we have been saved - spiritually raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus for the coming age, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us. By grace we have been saved through faith - this is not our own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no man may boast in his salvation except through Jesus Christ. Will you accept the mire you are in and allow someone to pull you and safe you? Or do you remain content to crawl in the lower realms of the world, engulfed by its evilness and overcome by its schemes?