The Sin of My Summer

I sat with my father of confession today to try make sense of why God sent me to Bangladesh this summer. God wanted me there for a reason. After all, my multiple scholarships made this trip financially profitable for me and I was the only one in our group that never got sick. But I was also the one in the group that most hated Bangladesh. So why? Why would God send me to a place that would make me miserable for 6 weeks? To show me that I am spoiled. Not materialistically (that is obvious and does not need a trip abroad), but spiritually and religiously spoiled rotten.

Dhaka brought the worst out in me. There has never been a time in my life when I felt more angry, hateful, restless, stressed, disgusted and at loss for peace than my time in Dhaka. I couldn't see God in the people like I so easily did in Egypt and Ghana. I couldn't feel God's joy, even when I was in good company. I couldn't see God anywhere in Dhaka. Bangladesh felt like an abandoned, hopeless place, filled with miserable poor people and resentful, immigration-seeking upperclass people. God's blessings were no where to be found in Dhaka. Inevitably, I received nothing spiritual from Dhaka. (This is in stark contrast to Egypt, of course.)

So what did God want from me? He wanted me to seek Him. He took away what I was used to. One of the servants in our Church once described our congregation as "spiritually fat". We get spoon-fed, even stuffed, with every spiritual blessing we need to grow and flourish. Sermons, retreats, prayer meetings, wonderful teachers, beautiful and heavenly liturgies. I am the first to say that I am completely dependent on my environment for my spiritual benefit. The Church is my refuge and shelter. And without being within the Church and/or among believers, I am lost. I didn't chase after God by myself, without the aid of others or the Church, this summer when I felt empty and disgusted with myself. I expected God to provide me with His blessings naturally and without any effort on my part. But all He wanted was for me to change and actually SEEK HIM. But I didn't. And that was the sin of my summer.