wrestling and begging

i want the kingdom to come now...this week on wednesday i found myself on my knees begging God to give freedom to our friends and break the chains that are holding them so fast. chains of poverty, chains of injustice, chains of fear, chains of literal slavery and death...i do not know if any of you have every entertained the idea of wrestling with God but dude i felt agressive...i want it now and i am tired of waiting. i begged God in prayer as i circled him with my demands. And like most wrestling matches with God (i guess we only know about one for sure) i left with a limp and some humility but i also feel like i left with some of prayers answered and my faith increased. because God let me battle it out with him, question him, and demand what He has already promised some pretty amazing things have happened in the last week in the gach and there has also been some hard stuff but even in that we are coming out on the other side and we are able to say God did that for us and he did it for our friend mitu and maybe today for our friend china.

this morning we did a community devotion on faith and one of the questions was why in so many of jesus' miracles was the healing dependant on the faith of someone. i do not want what God does in kolkata to be dependant on my faith. my faith is weak and lame to be sure. but i sure do want what God has to give for the women of sonagacchi and it seems as though that is gonna really take a alot of faith. so i guess you could say for the past week i have been having a crisis of faith...not really about whether i believe in God but if i believe he is big enough to heal and redeem what i see here everyday. anyway, back to today, as i reflected on that question, i realized that God wants us to participate in the miracle, you kind of in some ways have to work for miracles (hopefully he includes wrestling and begging as work). You have to believe for them...he asks you to believe before he does it and so he gets the glory and we can not say i did that or they did that...we have to say He did it. he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants but he wants us to be apart of making it happen by believing Him and being his hands and his feet.

this last week i have often found myself at the end of myself but i am also finding that as i continue to wrestle and beg and He is doing miracles in the lives of friends. mitu is once step closer to freedom and china might have freedom today and Rina and Rina are learing to read and who know where that will lead. and upendra and gita are understanding accountablity and forgiveness and love...and all these things really are miracles and for all these things we are giving God the glory in Kolkata today.