The Rooftops

Coming down off the rooftops is hard. We visit one brothel in the gach every week and we have the most amazing conversations sitting on roof, looking at the sky as the sun sets every Tuesday. I forget that it is a brothel and that the women who live on the floors below are selling themselves and that the streets below are being filled with darkness as the sun sets. Coming down from the rooftop, I remember that I am in brothel, in red light district whose dark slippery stairs contributed to the death of one of our friends. Coming down from the rooftop is hard.

This week we celebrated the amazing 2 year anniversary of Sari Bari. We took the ladies out to eat at a nice restaurant, all of us dressed in Sari’s to mark the occasion. We went from the restaurant to the movies to escape into the Bollywood reality. It was great. After two years, it was easy to see the marked changes in the woman who have come to be apart of our community over time. They are healthy, many recovered from multiple serious health issues. Two women were hospitalized when they first came to work with us but now stand as a testimony of healing and life literally being recovered and made new. All the women, including the trainees, a reflect a glow that they did not have when they first walked through our doors. They love each other. Some of them love Jesus and it really shows. They have begun to know that they are loved. If you ask them what kind of business we have, they will tell you “freedom” is our business. If you ask them about their life they will tell you that is has so much value and they are starting to believe it. The woman we shared our celebration meal with and the women we stood with at the entrance to movies are not prostitutes, they are not rejected, they are not without value. No one could recognize them as anything but beautiful Indian women on a day out. It was beautiful…a picture of profound redemption. It was the rooftop so to speak.

But Kolkata sneaks in a reminds me, even on a day like our 2nd anniversary celebration that we do not get to stay on the rooftops watching the sunsets forever. I was distracted by a small boy while waiting for entrance to the movies. He was covered in scabies and in a really bad state. He was begging, asking for money with a sad face that marks a beggar on the Kolkata streets. I felt my heart harden…I wanted to say don’t you see who I am with, I am serving these ladies, loving these ladies, giving my life to Jesus for these ladies. But there he was demanding my attention, my money, my life. And I just at that moment was not willing to let anyone take my life from me, nor was I willing to give it freely, I wanted my moment of joy to be free from suffering and relish in the moments of redemption and hope. I asked the little boy where his mother was and thought I might give her a piece of my mind about letting her small son get in such a bad physical condition. He said he did not have parents. My hands had to open a little…to see the little boy. I had to let him into the inner circle of the redeemed when in my heart I wanted to keep him out. We were able to get the little boy some food and find out that he also had and “owner” (like many of the women we know who still work in the trade) who controlled his begging and his earnings. I am still thinking about that little boy. Thinking about my hard heart and my desire to hold on to my earnings, even my kingdom earnings, when they are not mine to begin with and never will be. What has happened at Sari Bari and in the relational ministry in the red light areas in the last two years is Gods gift to the women of those places. His gifts are not only for them but for the little boys who beg and who need a savior as desperately as the women, as desperately as I do. I realize again and again that I can not open my hand and my heart to one and close my hand and my heart to others. The gift is an open gift for all to receive.

I have been given the gift of compassion. It is hard gift because as Nouwen says it often open to receive another kind of gift which is the gift of self confrontation To suffer with, we must suffer. The little boy confronted me with my pride and selfishness. The women confront me with my impatience, fear of rejection and my own struggle with value. I have to let them in to let God change me, I have to open my hands and let the rooftop moments mingle with the moments in the dark alley.

“God’s compassionate heart does not have limits. God’s heart is greater, than the human heart. It is the divine heart that God wants to give us so that we can love all people without burning out or becoming numb.”

My prayer is always that my heart would be just little like Jesus for those that He loves in Kolkata. I am looking for 100 people to come alongside me as prayer partners this year and in the coming years. The work continues to grow and good, good fruit is coming but I continue to see the need for more of God’s grace and His love and His hand in all the work that we do and in my own life. If you would be interested in praying for me on a regular basis please let me know.

Also if you would be interested in supporting me personally or in supporting the work at Sari Bari please send me an email and I can tell you how to do that as well.