What does it mean to live out your faith in the real-world and not just in your head? To let the truth of the Gospel shake you to your very core and spur you on to act out of love? To cast aside any idol that might get in the way? These are the questions that confronted me when I had the eye-opening opportunity to go on a mission trip to India. 

When my group and I first arrived, we stumbled off of the 14 hour flight dirty and unshowered. The wave of 102 degree heat hit us like a load of bricks, and we were all too eager to pile into tiny taxis with blessed air conditioning that drove us (haphazardly, I might add; the cars were jam packed together and an inch apart) to the YMCA we’d be staying at for the first part of the trip. There we unpacked, thanked God for safe travels and beds, and slept like logs. 

The next day we explored New Delhi, passing by buildings shaped like clothespins and streets packed with yellow taxis and green automated rickshaws and eventually arrived at a temple dedicated to Sikhism. There, a guide nicknamed ‘Ji’ explained to us that Sikhs believed in caring for everyone, regardless of race, gender, background, or economic status. They lived this out by serving food to the poor and homeless around them 24/7, every day of the week, nonstop. 

“Isn’t this what the church in America should be doing more of?” I thought to myself when we left. 

After a few days in New Delhi spent touring and dining on Dal (a mixture of salty and savory lentils and beans) and other foods, we arrived at the first hospital compound we’d assist at. 

The medical students assimilated quickly and I awkwardly asked if there was another way to help (surgeries and diagnosis are not my strong suit). The workers there asked if I could run a VBS for the kids who lived on the compound, and trusting in God instead of my completely unprepared brain, I agreed. God helped me plan a week’s worth of VBS material in one night! At the end, when the kids performed a skit of “Daniel and the Lion’s Den” for their parents, I marveled at what only God could have done. When we give him our plans and choose to keep our hands open, he gives us something better. 

Then, on the final day before we left, we visited Varanasi to ride a boat on the Ganges river. Our guide was a missionary who’d lived in India for ten years, and as we floated along on the murky brown waters of the Ganges, he explained its meaning. To Hindus, the Ganges is the only way to experience redemption from sin and go straight to heaven. They believe that the River offered life, so they throw their dead (whether ashes or not) in the river, as well as bathe in it to cleanse themselves from sin. Yet if the living ones went off and sinned again, what would be the point? As I looked at the people, God’s people, each unique and honored, bathing in the dirty river, I realized just how futile us trying to work our way to heaven is. 

On our 30-hour trip back home, I thought that just like Hindus in India bathing in the Ganges and hoping for salvation, Americans chase after saving grace in the form of a new Mercedes, a gourmet sushi meal, or the top rung on the social ladder. Even Christians turn aside for visible things they think will help them. But it’s pointless without Christ. He is the Living Water, able to satisfy our thirst and spur us on to help others out of love, and we can hold our hands open to him for his outpouring. 

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” ~John 7:37-38