Nepal Reflection #2: The Bridge

I am going to repost what I already wrote, as a reminder and also with pictures. All that in the river is trash. It's not dirt. It's trash.

This was my journal entry from June 13 after Emily and I had gone to the Monkey Temple and took a little trek through Kathmandu:

Lord, this time this morning to actually walk through Kathmandu and to the Monkey Temple allowed me time to truly see these people as people. The scene at the river really made me think. We stood there for a long time. The smell was horrific. All the trash and sewage from the city flows straight to the river. While we were standing there, a man stopped on his motorcycle and just chucked a huge back of garbage over the edge. People are digging through the garbage. There was a man literally standing in the water sifting through garbage and sewage as it flowed into the river. There were women and children standing on the edge of the river looking through the trash. There were what looked like dead pigs laying in the middle of the trash with trash all over them. It was a sad and disgusting sight.

It made me think about how God created us for so much more but this is all these people know. Yet, in America, we are satisfied in our comfort, money, marriage, reputations, friendships, and worldly things. We strive for these things but we might as well be the man in the river sifting through the garbage. God has so much more for us, yet we settle for what we know. In reality, our life is lived by this river in Nepal until we truly begin to live the life Jesus modeled for us. Until then, we are no different from the man sifting through and trying to find a treasure in the crap of this life. GOD HAS SO MUCH MORE IN STORE FOR US THAN WE CAN IMAGINE. IT COULD BE BEAUTIFUL UNLESS WE DECIDE TO SETTLE FOR THE CRAP.