promised land

A few weeks ago, my coworker asked if I'd be willing to teach ballet to her 3-year-old daughter, Nenana. Since the bulk of my own ballet training occurred during half of my 5th grade year, 3-year-old is just about my speed. So I picked out the song "When You Believe" from The Prince of Egypt, and I've been prancing around my living room, choreographing movements to match the meaning of the music.

I just got back from a 10-day trip to Beung Klung, a small town 8 hours south of where I live in Mae Sot, Thailand. It looks like a fairly unassuming place at first glance. Vegetable stands, partially paved roads, a couple barrels with hand-pumps that serve as diesel stations. But if you take a right about 1 kilometer before the Burma border, you'll come to a little hill in the midst of the betel nut trees, and on that hill you'll discover something most extraordinary: an outpost of the Kingdom of God.

I think the whole compound sort of spilled out of the hearts of the people who now work there. Eliya lives like a well-aimed explosion. His wife, Cat, is a tornado in rewind. Pastor Samuel's family is like the flame that everyone else lights their candle from on Christmas Eve. Sue Bu is perpetual springtime. There are others. And they all love Jesus with candid passion. The results? A children's home, a school, a healthcare training center, a clinic, a church, a store, several houses, and an endless supply of vision for more creative ways to bless people on both sides of the Thai/Burma border. It's nothing short of incarnational.

Our team had the privilege of joining in this good work last week. With us was an experienced eye surgeon who removed cataracts from the eyes of 20 people who would otherwise have been essentially blind. Among these was Choo Dah, grandmother to one of our medics. Her granddaughter, Paw Ku Htee, assisted with the surgery and was right there, grinning ear to ear, when the bandage was removed the next day. They were able to look into each other's eyes for the first time in years.

We did vision screening and glasses-fitting, malaria treatment and hearing aid distribution. We helped the kids paint watercolor pictures of Jonah and the big fish. We listened to our Karen friends sing a lot of songs and sang a few of our own.

On Saturday morning, we held a "Run for Relief" for the kids. Races are run under that name all over the world to raise money, awareness, and prayer support for the oppressed minorities of Burma. It was no small thing to witness those hundred children advocating for their own people - for their families, for themselves. They prayed together at the start line, shouted "Free Burma!" to the sky, and launched themselves down the hill in a mass of slapping flip flops. The route took them within 50 meters of Burma itself. Maybe some of them wished they could keep right on running.

The truth is, Eliya and the others who live on that compound are not where they really want to be. They are Karen, and they long to go back to the land they still consider home. This is what they pray for, often through tears. For decades, they've been in exile, forced out of Karen State by the oppression of the Burma Army. Now though, with the peace process actively underway, there's more hope of a collective Karen home going than there has been in over 60 years.

Every afternoon, when the kids from the children's home got out of school, they flocked over to play with the foreigners on our team. Somewhere along the way, one of the little girls grabbed my hands and we started to dance. It occurred to me that it might be fun to teach her the choreography I had just put together for Nenana. I was right. Pretty soon, I had a whole dance class of little girls spinning along with me to the soaring melody pouring out of my tiny travel speaker.

"Many nights we've prayed with no proof anyone could hear.

In our hearts a hopeful song we barely understood.

Now we are not afraid, although we know there's much to fear.

We were moving mountains long before we knew we could."

And I thought, yes. The Israelites had to wait 400 years for their exodus, but it came. I desire that it will come, too, for my Karen friends. I do pray alongside them that this will include a return to their geographical promised land, and soon. But the evidence in Beung Klung has proven to me that their journey to a far more glorious place, the Kingdom of God, need not wait. It is, in fact, well underway.

"There can be miracles when you believe.

Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill.

Who knows what miracles you can achieve

When you believe.

Somehow you will, you will when you believe."