A Boy Named Rindy, page 32
“Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth as a baby, grew into a man and lived a perfect life—because we could not, even if we had a million lifetimes to live. We are incapable of living lives without sin.”
He paused. No one seemed to breathe, hanging on these words of life.
“But the world did not receive Him. No, they killed Him. They beat Him and hung Him on a cross to die. They killed the only sinless, spotless human to ever live.”
I wiped at my eyes, not understanding the emotion swelling in my chest until it felt like it might suffocate me.
He didn’t die. He couldn’t have. I had heard He was alive!
“He died for your sin, and He died for mine, so we didn’t have to. He died for Cambodia. He died for all the sin and destruction that has been waged here. He died for us. He died so we never again have to work our way into salvation because we never could. He died for us. He died for us. He died for us. Do you understand this?”
The man’s voice cracked. People around me began to weep. If this perfect man is dead, the one who had no bad merit, then all is lost. There is no salvation left for us.
After a few minutes passed, the man began to speak again, his voice quieter. We all leaned forward to listen.
“But He rose from the dead, after three days of darkness and destruction, as He conquered not only sin, but death. He rose back to life again. He was reborn back to this earth for one purpose: to conquer sin and death for us because we could not. It’s a lie that we are reborn in an endless cycle until we are released. We only have one life to live and know this Jesus before we die and can be reborn into His glorious kingdom or else suffer eternal suffering apart from Him in hell.”
I looked at Samang, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. But I felt like my chest had just been split open and sunlight was pouring in.
What did He require—this Jesus who died in my place?
As if to read my thoughts, the man continued speaking, “If anyone is wondering what this God requires in order to follow Him, I’m here to tell you today that all He wants from you is for you to accept this gift. The gift that Jesus came to earth, lived a spotless life and died in our place—your place.”
There must be a catch. There must be.
“Is there anyone out there who wants me to pray with them as they make this decision? Anyone who wants me to introduce them to Jesus?”
My heart pounded. It seemed like the crowd was suddenly aware of me—a single boy in torn clothes. I had so many questions, so many fears, but I rose to my feet and began to walk forward. I could hear Samang behind me, following. No one seemed surprised to see two confused looking teens make their way through the crowd. Instead, they too seemed happy we were there. Weaving our way to the front, we reluctantly lowered ourselves to our knees into the dirt with dozens of others. Some of them were crying and others were smiling.
“Do you want to give your lives to Jesus?” the speaker asked, bending down to look each of us in the face. He spoke softly, and something in his eyes looked familiar. They were ordinary brown, but something in them reminded me of Mr. Thach. Perhaps it wasn’t the color at all, but something deeper than that.
What do I have to lose? I met the gaze of this Cambodian Christian.
“Yes,” I responded, and so did Samang.
“Repeat after me then,” the man said.
“Jesus, I know I have sinned, and I ask you to forgive me.” I uttered the words, trying to understand them. The weight of my shame and my cowardice never more real, never more palpable. "I believe you, Jesus. I believe you died for me and that you rose from the dead.” I smiled, repeating the words. I knew He was alive; unlike Buddha and every other god I had ever heard of. “I invite you, Jesus, to come into my life. I want to trust you and follow you only, as my Lord and my Savior.”
Is Jesus the only God? I wondered, my thoughts sputtering. Do I follow only Him? My thoughts spilled out like water all over the ground. I thought about Buddha, all the spirits Khan worshiped and the host of other gods I had brushed shoulders with throughout the years. The idea of serving only one was a new thought—one I couldn’t quite understand. Then a single thought scooped up all my scattered droplets of confusion and brought them back together again.
If He did all this for me, then there is no other god worth serving.
“I invite you to come into my life.” I stared straight ahead, not understanding why some closed their eyes. “I will follow you—only you, Jesus.” Stumbling over the words, I tried to remember exactly what to say. I looked up awkwardly because I knew I hadn’t repeated the words just right, but the man smiled and nodded, placing a hand on my shoulder. Samang and I arose and walked out of the structure, through the mob of people who were now singing. What had I just done?
Something felt different in the air I breathed. A cleansing rainstorm had come and driven all the haze away. For the first time in my eighteen years of life, I saw clearly.
56
Death of The Tiger
“I was searching.” — Rindy
Later that night
I was in the trench again. Chivy and all my mets were alive, working beside me. When suddenly, I began to beat them, my hands pounding in their faces, unable to stop myself. I screamed, trying to pry my hands from them, but I couldn’t stop. My hands were no longer my own. They cried for mercy, but I would not—could not—stop. Chivy tried to escape, climbing up the trench, but I yanked her back and raised my hoe over my head, screaming as I let it fall. When no one was left alive, I screamed and tore my hair. That’s when I heard the heavy purr I could never forget. It emerged from the darkness of the trench, crawling over the lifeless frames of my mets. Its fiery eyes locked on me. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It crouched to leap and sprang toward me.
I awoke with a jerk, sweating and shaking. I crawled off the low bamboo platform bed and sat on the ground, careful not to awaken anyone. I looked up at the sky. The moon stared back, only an incomplete drop of water in the expanse. It was far from daylight. I walked to the fence and stared out. I didn’t feel alone, and I remembered what had happened the previous day. The day I had given my life to Jesus. For me, it had been an easy exchange, as I had received something but lost nothing. But what about Him? What if He didn’t want someone like me as a follower?
Absently, I walked through the rows of sleeping people and passed a few fires, dozens of men drank out of bottles and smoked smuggled cigarettes. I’m sure Khan and Kiry were around one of them too, just not the same fire. They couldn’t be in each other’s presence without an eruption. I didn’t know where I was going, but it wasn’t there.
After hours of walking, I went to the only place I felt like I could—the last place I had felt peace. As I approached the structure where the Christian had preached earlier that day, I was surprised to see a small fire kindled beside it and a single man sitting there.
“Come."
I approached uneasily.
"So, you’re the reason I couldn’t sleep.” Firelight danced across his smiling features. It was the Christian who had spoken to the crowd. The one who had told me about Jesus. “I didn’t get to introduce myself yesterday, but my name is Pastor Akara. What’s yours?”
“Rindy.” I squatted beside him. “What do you mean I’m the reason you couldn’t sleep?”
“I awoke suddenly and felt that I needed to come here. So I did.”
I gazed into the fire, not understanding, but comforted by his words.
“Did you have trouble sleeping?”
I nodded.
“Want to tell me about it?”
I hesitated, not knowing how to begin. “I have these nightmares almost every night. They’re horrible, and I can’t seem to escape. They are every night. They always have a tiger.” I shuddered at the memories.
“I see. I have had similar ones.”
My eyes met his, understanding reflecting there. “You have?”
“Yes, many times.”
“Do you still?”
“No.”
I spun toward him. “Tell me how they stopped.”
“Jesus set me free from them after I stopped running.”
“Stopped running from what?”
“From myself.”
I didn’t understand.
“Let me tell you a story. Did you know that there are nearly two hundred of us Christians that escaped Cambodia in Khao-I-Dang?"
I shook my head. “I thought the Khmer Rouge killed all the Christians.”
“No, about twenty families survived and made it here. But do you want to know what keeps me up at night?”
I nodded my head, unable to look away.
“It’s the ones that aren’t here because of me.”
Pastor Akara began to cry, gleaming tears running down his cheeks. I envied him for his tears and the freedom they brought. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried.
“Shortly before the Khmer Rouge took over, I met a Christian at my workplace, and he convinced me to come with him to church. I soon became a Christian myself. They welcomed me into their small circle, loving and caring for me. When the Khmer Rouge offered a little extra food to anyone who knew anything about any Christians, I exposed three families. Three beautiful families—with mothers and children. They were murdered that night.”
I pulled my eyes away from him, staring into the fire as it danced and writhed.
“After I had eaten the extra bowl of watery rice, the guilt and hatred for myself, crushed me. The nightmares were unthinkable.” He shook his head. “Until some of the Christians that remained, risked their lives to tell me, me”—he pounded his chest—“about forgiveness.”
My eyes met his.
“About the forgiveness Jesus offered me when I deserved to die.”
Warmth began to creep up from the pit of my stomach.
“Rindy, Jesus asks for your life not so you can lose something, but so you can gain everything. You can gain forgiveness, and He can teach you how His love covers every sin. Every single one. For the entire world. For you.”
He paused, looking up toward the sky, seeming to mutter to himself. Then his eyes rested on me again.
“I’m going to make a guess here, but I think the sin you’re carrying the most heavily is the sin of hating yourself for being alive when so many are not.”
At these simple words, I broke. A torrent of tears flowed out of me, out of a place that was yet unexplored—my soul. For the first time, I mourned Chivy and all the mets who had died in my place. I grieved the brokenness of my country. The brokenness of my family. The brokenness of myself. The sin was great. Sobs wracked my body, until at last, I could see clearly again. My pulse slowed and my breath eased. The sun was rising over the horizon of trees, and Pastor Akara sat beside me, his eyes wet too.
“Why me? Why did I survive when Chivy deserved to live, not me?”
“Chivy?” Pastor Akara’s eyes softened. “That’s a lovely name. Chivy means life. If I’ve learned anything following Jesus so far, it’s that death gives birth to life. No death is wasted. I know this will be your story.”
He paused again, studying the horizon. “I can’t answer the question of why so many died. I don’t think we’re meant to always know the whys behind the things that happen in this broken world that is bent on sin. But I do know that the enemy, this tiger named Satan who’s been hunting you since the day you were born, will be killed once and for all. But until that day, Jesus has given us everything we need to overcome him.”
He turned to me, his eyes reflecting the rising sun.
“Rindy, you have been spared because the world needs to know that God lives, even in Cambodia. Especially in Cambodia. He’s seen what has happened here. His heart breaks over it; I know this without a shadow of a doubt. He’s choosing you as His messenger to bind up the brokenhearted, to heal the sick and to proclaim that He still lives and will never leave us.”
He turned to me, grasping my shoulders in his big hands. “If you hate your life and wish it away, God can’t use it. He can’t redeem it. He can’t present it to the world that so desperately needs to know that He can restore, even out of this deep darkness we are all climbing from.”
The sunlight was consuming the shadows, casting their rays over every place in the camp. Over every shadow in me.
“Rindy, do you want to be done running?”
I nodded, smiling.
I never again dreamed of the tiger.
From that day forward, his power was broken over my life forever.
57
Church Boy
“Not that I was a smoker or drinker, I never did any of that, but I felt that my life was changed…I was no longer a ‘temple boy,’ I was a ‘church boy.’” — Rindy
Four days later
“You’ve betrayed your family.”
The words were like a slap to my face. I squatted in the dirt, looking up at Khan. I glanced at Mteay and Vuthy, who were the only other people present.
I had just returned from the Christian church, as Samang and I had been talking to Pastor Akara. He had read many of Jesus’s words to us from a book he kept in his pocket, which he called “the Bible.” One sentence, he uttered, had occupied every corner of my mind since.
“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
The thought had been ridiculous and clashed with my understanding of all the gods I had ever known. The idea that I was known not by just a god, but the only God, didn’t seem possible. I chewed on the words slowly, savoring the sweetness but unable to swallow them. I had chewed on them all the way back to my part of the camp. When I found my family and told them I had become a follower of Jesus, Khan had not been pleased.
“Are you even listening to me, you fool?” Khan growled, the insults dribbling out of his mouth. “You have betrayed our tradition and our religion.” The odor of incense mingled with the sweat evaporating from his body filled my nostrils. “I just got back from the temple, but I will return to ask the spirits to forgive your treachery. You’re risking everything. Don’t you want us to have the good fortune of being able to get out of this camp?” He stalked away, leaving his words to cling to me like mud.
I looked at Mteay, who sat thin and quiet on the bamboo communal bed. Her look of disappointment hurt worse than Khan’s angry words.
“Mteay?” I whispered, walking over to sit next to her crumbled frame. “Mteay.”
She looked up at me with eyes full of questions.
“Is Buddhism not good enough for you anymore?” she asked, her breath quivering.
“It never really was.” My words come out softly and gently, so as not to hurt her. “I lost whatever faith I had in Buddhism long ago.” I paused, reflecting. “Because of all that has happened to me. Because of all that has happened to us.
"What was so bad you turned your back on it?"
“When Chidaun put me in the temple, I was hit bad…” I sputtered into an uncertain silence, heat flooding my face with the old, unspoken memory. Her eyes questioned mine, but she never opened her mouth. Instead, her neck hung low, making her shoulder blades stick into the air. My words sat heavy on her, squishing her to the ground. She slowly stood and shuffled after Khan to the Buddhist temple, leaving Vuthy and me alone.
I looked into his eyes, seeing the questions there. I didn’t know how to answer them, I only had this feeling inside my chest that I didn’t have the words for. I stared into the sky, swirling in windswept clouds. Silently, I prayed what Pastor Akara had told me to whenever I didn’t have the right words.
Jesus, help me.
“Vuthy, I’ve found the One who wanted us. The One who thought we…” I paused looking to the sky again for the words. “I found the Father we’ve always wanted—One who has never left us and promised to never leave us.”
Vuthy’s head shot up from the place in the dirt he had been absently scribbling at with a stick.
“What do you mean, Rindy? You’re talking nonsense.”
I looked at the sky again, searching for the way to tell him, make him understand.
“Do you remember those stories I told you about Jesus, coming in the clouds?”
Vuthy nodded.
“It wasn’t just a child’s story. It was true, but I didn’t know how true until now. Jesus really did come from the clouds from His Father, to introduce us to Him. He’s been watching us this whole time, just hoping we’ll know Him and how much He loves us.”
Vuthy’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“God sees us, Vuthy. I heard some of His words in a book today, and when I heard them, my heart beat so quickly, like they were just meant for you and me. I knew the words were true. I don’t really know why or even how, but I know it’s true—”
“What’s true, Rindy?” Vuthy exhaled the words, frustrated.
“That He loved us even when we were worthless kids. That He wanted us when Aupouk and Mteay didn’t. That He loved us, before we even knew He existed.”
Vuthy stared into my eyes, and for a moment, I remembered being eight again. Vuthy was six, and he was crying. I heard the words I was never meant to hear:
“I don’t need him.
I don’t want him.
I have no use for him!”
They were the exchanged words of Mteay and Aupouk as they volleyed them back and forth at each other until my worthlessness was stamped on my eight-year-old mind. The words had buzzed around my head and landed on me, tipped with the poison of rejection. They had borne their way into my heart. I had always felt the sting of them, buried just beneath the skin; too deep to dig out but shallow enough to always feel. They had long since festered and had eventually calloused into an inseparable part of me. There, sitting next to my unsuspecting little brother, the words of Jesus slid deeper, past my brain and into my skin, burning into that calloused place.
