Me: What is wrong Prodigal?

Prodigal:  I feel lower than a gopher hole.

Me:  Maybe I can share a story that will cheer you up!

 

This is from the book  The God Who Hung On the Cross by Dois Rosser Jr. and Ellen Vaughn

 

In September 1999, a pastor we’ll call Tuy Seng traveled to Khampong Tom Province in the north of Cambodia.  Pastor Seng had wanted to bring the Gospel to the remote villages there for years, but they had been under the control of an isolated pocket of Khmer Rouge radicals until early 1999.

Now, as far as anyone knew, he was the first person to speak of Jesus in that isolated area.  Most villagers cast their lot with Buddhism or ancestor worship.  Christianity was unheard of.

But when Seng arrived at one small, rural village, the people welcomed him eagerly.  They could not hear enough about the Gospel.  Most made decisions to commit their lives to Christ.  Smiling, Pastor Seng asked the people why it seemed as if they had been waiting for him to come.

An old woman shuffled to the front of the group, bowed, and grasped Pastor Seng’s hands.  “We have been waiting,” she said.  “We have been waiting for you for twenty years.” And then she told them this story.

After the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, they made their way through the countryside, destroying just about anything created with purpose and design-bridges, highways, hospitals, human beings.  It took a while, but after they had dealt with Phnom Penh and other city centers, they focused on the villages.

So it was that the soldiers came to this hamlet in 1979.  Their technique was the same as it has been for countless communities, but for the people who lived there the terror was new.  The communists emerged from the jungle and strode from hut to hut, ordering the villagers out.  Those who resisted were killed at once; many died in front of their homes.

The rest were marched to a clearing behind the village.  Their own farm tools were thrust into their hands.

“Now dig!” the soldiers shouted.

The villagers hacked the red-clay soil, trembling with the dark realization that they were digging their own mass grave.  Some lost their nerve and tried to run.  They were shot and dragged to the edge of the still shallow pit.

Hours passed as the people sweated and wept and dug-until finally the hole was deep enough.  The people laid down their spades and shovels.  The soldiers shouted for them to turn and face the pit.

They braced themselves, waiting for the killing blows, knowing that the soldiers would bludgeon them to death rather than shoot them-why waste precious bullets on ordinary peasants?

The heavy, humid air lay still as the villagers began to cry out-the wail before death, when the heart’s longing to live becomes a desperate plea for help.  Some screamed to Buddha, to ancestors, or to demon spirits.  A few cried for their mothers.

Then one woman began to cry, intuitively, to one of her earliest memories-the faint echo of a story told her by her mother about the God who hung on the cross.  She called out to that God.  Surely the One who had suffered Himself might have compassion on those about to die.  Time stopped.  The humid jungle air lay still.

Suddenly the screams around her became one great wail, as the entire village called out as one, crying for their lives to the God who hung on the cross.

There was only silence.

They sobbed into the darkness of the pit before them.

Silence.  A flicker of hope.

And then the people turned, one by one by one.

The jungle was empty.  The soldiers were gone.

And ever since that astounding day in 1979, the people of that village had been waiting-waiting for someone to come and tell them more-more about the God who hug on the cross.

 

John 3:31-33

He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.  He who comes from heaven is above all.  He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org