Broken

When was the last time you received a gift? Did you know how to respond?

I recently gave a surprise gift to a Thai friend. She looked confused. Later she explained, "I like it but I don't know how to show it." Why? Because in Thai culture any show of emotion is taboo, especially love. Parents and children don't exchange hugs or kisses. Neither do husbands and wives. If there is a special occasion they give gifts but otherwise they don't. My friend continued, "If I am away for a year and then return to visit home my family don't make a fuss of me, they are just normal. I never heard my Mum tell me that she loved me, and she is now dead. Neither did I tell her I loved her. We just assume it by everyday actions - Mum cooks for me and feeds me, she must love me. My daughter came back home to visit - she must care for me." And that is it.

But this friend is a Christian. She has been with western Christians for years, heard and read about how important giving and receiving physical affection is between children and parents. As a result, she told her niece to hug her Mum everyday. Her niece obediently did... only to have her Mum warned by a neighbour that if the child continued to show too much affection, it would shorten the Mother's life. And so culture and tradition, superstition and fear won again. The foreign versus the familiar. Better the devil you know.

Is this the Buddhism the West perceives? This land of smiles, famed for its friendliness and a warm welcome, is a land of broken hearts, because they put their faith in broken cisterns. "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." Jeremiah 2:13. The promises of Buddhhism are empty - it is a broken cistern. Where it seems to promise freedom from suffering, it only creates more, by denying the very cravings of the human heart. The heart was made for love. And only God, who is by his very nature, LOVE, can quench our thirst. Broken people need to be healed. Empty hearts need to be filled... but only the Maker knows how.

We were made to give love, and we need to receive love. If these needs go unmet, they are expressed in other unhealthy ways. The sad reality therefore is that this people, my people, experience sexual abuse and promiscuity to epidemic proportions, so much so that it is almost considered normal. 'Men' were used synonymously with 'unfaithful' in a recent conversation with another friend. As you can imagine, a people broken by abuse and hungry for love will self medicate. Starved of normal expressions of love, and shamed by frequent abuse, gender confusion results. Thailand is now viewed as an international hub of gender-bending norms, and a centre of sexual alterations. 

Sometimes these problems seem so endemic in this society, so pervasive, that it is easy to lose hope. What we see is just the tip of an iceberg. The reality is lives all around us filled with pain and emptiness, scarcely recognised anymore ~ this is normality, all they have known for generations. At times like this, I remember the words of Psalm 121:
       1I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from?

2My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 

He is the God of the broken, because he is their Maker. He is the only healer and His work is perfect. His love heals every wound, as nothing else can. His invitation to the thirsty is found in Isaiah 55 (Message version): 

1-5 “Hey there! All who are thirsty,
    come to the water!
Are you penniless?
    Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
    Buy without money—everything’s free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
    your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
    fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
    listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
    the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.

Each of us are broken people. Each one is thirsty. Only in Jesus can we find our healing, quench our heart's thirst for love. I urge you today, receive His love. And the beauty of it is, this is a love that cannot help but overflow. Go hug your children, as our cousins across the pond would say, "love on" your family. We are blessed to be a blessing.