One of the natural protection mechanisms in India is blindness. You cannot help yourself. No matter how poor one thinks of themselves, someone almost anyone in India has less. The first response is often soul wrenching angst. How can so many people be so poor? Why isn’t someone doing something about it? What is the right response for me?
The response doesn’t last long, if only because there are so many people, so much poverty or lack of what you and I consider the basic necessities of life. It is in that moment when you are coping with your self that the blindness begins. It is as if the body was wired to start the process. The first step is one of ignoring the taps on the car windows while you are locked in traffic. The second often follows quickly when you find yourself mindlessly continuing a conversation about truly meaningless things while someone desperately looks to you for help. It gets progressive when you brush aside, act as if they were never in your space, and then harden you heart to the situation around you. Usually it happens quickly, hours or days. For those with large compassionate hearts it may take weeks. There are extreme cases measured in seconds.
When you combine the extreme difference between your life and mine with the majority of those in India you begin to sense just how far apart our lives must be from God’s. How does the Divine deal with the billions of requests that come, most with little or no link with the relationships the Spirit seeks to have with us? Does God turn a blind eye? Is God heartless when it comes to our situation? Will things always be this way?
The answer is blunt. God observes reality as it is – “I see where you live, right under the shadow of Satan’s throne” (Revelation 2.12) and then does something. No sitting there, ignoring the pain, lack of hope, and ignorance. God unleashes endless buckets of compassion, mercy, hope, mercy – that is grace for every one.
