Forgotten Faces

I used to love flying in this country. There is something mezmorizing about hovering so low to some of the most rugged mountains in the world.  Especially these days when the snow will be fresh on the highest peaks and the valleys below will still be bare, the beauty is staggering.

Everyone does it, puts their forehead to the window of the plane and stares down at the ground below. It is like a rule, or a magnetic pull or something. You just can’t help but stare at the majesty of creation that is sprawled beneath you.

But more and more, I find myself sad on trips in that little white plane. I try to busy myself with my son instead of the ground below.  I think about my destination and not the souls I am floating by. 

See, in each valley and nook and cranny between those big majestic mountains lies people. Living and breathing souls.

I have been to some pretty remote places in this land and met people who have never seen a foreigner before, who have never ridden in a car before, who have never seen a t.v. before, never eaten ice cream before, and missed out on other important things. But even though I have seen those desolate and hidden places and heard the stories of the occupants, I can’t get over the isolation that many face in this land. At times it is beyond me how anyone could survive in the places where evidence of life can be found.  

There will be nothing for minutes in that plane and suddenly you see a village clinging to life on the side of a valley. Miles from the nearest living being, a shepherd boy will wave to the plane from the top of a mountain as the noise scatters his flock in 10 different directions. 

Every plane ride used to be a game of picking out those camoflauged dwellings, dirt that blends in with dirt, bodies scurrying around, workers toiling in the fields.

 

It used to be a game until my heart broke.

How many thousands of those people will never hear the name of my sweet Je.sus?

How many children will be brought into this world and then leave it (hopefully) years later, never having left their village, never having heard His name, never having tasted and seen that the Lo.rd is good? 

And even in writing it, my heart is wrenched once again.  Valley after valley, mountain after mountain, they live. To an outsider like me, smoke rising from their chimneys is the 
only evidence of their life.

How will they hear?

How will they know?

How will they understand?

These days, plane rides have become times of fervent pr.ayer. Begging God to break through in those crevices. For the wind of His Spirit to move forth, for His love to rush in to the hearts of those clinging to life and a very fragile existence.

Oh God, have mercy on the thousands who are forgotten before they are ever seen.