We arrived after a full day’s journey from Washington to Singapore, 28 hours from door to door via Tokyo, Japan. Flying over Southeast Asia, the little flight map on the plane showed us the cities that lay sleeping below…Taipei, Taiwan; Manila and the cyclone ravaged Philippines; Saigon, Vietnam; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Kuching and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and so many more smaller cities and villages, hundreds and hundreds of millions of people 35,000 feet below.
Some months ago I bumped across this article in the Washington Post that simply told in a remarkable graphic why God cares so much about this part of our globe.
It’s an amazing picture, isn’t it? Mind-boggling and overwhelming, with a sobering and joyful implication.
God loves this part of the world so much because so many people live here. It’s fair to say I think that if we say we love the world, we get to love Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
So we’ve come, to see how God is loving this part of humanity through the work of Christians here, and how much more there is to see happen and even participate in. With some notable exceptions like the Philippines, Christianity has yet to make a firm and lasting foothold in this part of the world. This means there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who have yet to fully receive the message of God’s love in Jesus, and witness the life-giving power of the Kingdom of God when it influences a whole society.
I feel privileged to be here, where ‘the other half’ lives. It’s just as right to say that where I live is ‘the other half’, just spread out over a whole lot more of our shared planet.