An Encounter with Death

During our time in China, my team had the opportunity to work with a medical ministry.  They brought in cleft palette children from the mountains.  We travelled on a 16 hour bus ride to return the children to their mountain villages.  While amongst the alluring mountains I journaled this…

I encountered death today.  A brutal + untimely death.  A death that shouldn’t have occured and leaves me heart-broken as a result.

Kari, Eric and I rode along in a tuk-tuk, on our way to go zip lining.  As we came around a bend in the road, scores of people lined the cliff overlooking rocks and a class 3 rapid.  Our driver pulled over to see about the hulabaloo.  Men with long poles of bamboo crouched on the rocks – hanging the poles near the end of the rapids.  And as we looked on, out of the tumultous waters tumbled a body – naked with arms stretched in characterstic drowning fashion.

I gasped at the sight and quickly turned away.  I could hear the frustration in Kari’s voice, “He’s still floating, you only float when you’re freshly drowned.  Why don’t they get him out?”  Her EMT training screamed the answers, but our situation left her helpless to do anything.  And a following quick succession of rapids left everyone else at the banks helpless to do anything as well.  I turned my eyes back just in time to see the small head follow its corpse to the bottom of the river.  Later as I ziplined across the river in a precarious harness, my soul unleashed the pain it felt in a fury of tears.

A man (we found out later) had flung himself off the rocks into the rapids and drowned.  That was a life!  He mattered to someone.  Somewhere in China tonight, someone’s life is forever changed.  His family’s pain crushed my heart as I thought about the turn of events their lives would now take.

And I wondered if he was a Christian.  Did he know Jesus?  Had his life just been committed to the pits of hell?  This country is barren!  There’s no fruit, the soil is dry and wasted.  Lord, what will it take?!  When will you flood these people with your presence?  They are lost and hopeless.  Everywhere I go in this country barrenness meets me.  The darkness taunts the believers with it’s hold over China. 

Please pray for China.  Pray for its deliverance.  Pray for this barren country.  Only Jesus can save them!