“It’s so dark”

“It’s so dark. You can feel the darkness.”

This statement, and others like it, are the earliest assessments I received of Cambodia. When I decided to go and visit for the first time, the responses from the general public were the same. When I decided to go as a summer intern, the responses had still not changed. When I announced God had called me as a missionary, and I was planning to return for the long run, the statement turned into a question, “But why? Why darkened Cambodia?”

I remember the first time I arrived in Cambodia. It was the most flabbergasting sight I had ever seen. Suddenly, I was a little child again, riding in the middle row of our 12-passenger family van, gazing out of the window with excitement about every sight to see and faces at which to wonder.

Phnom Penh hustled and bustled with motos (motorbikes) carrying up to four to five people, brothels on busy streets, smells I had never smelled before, idols and spirit houses everywhere, faces that told the stories of Christless lifetimes, and a language that made me feel as though I had entered not another country, but another planet. There was no romance. There was no immediate “falling in love” with Cambodia.

But it was the character of my God—who I came to know in my now very, very, dearly beloved Cambodia—that gave me an intense desire to return.

The Light in the darkness

My journey to Cambodia began long before I ever had the ambition of going to Cambodia. The first time I left the continent of North America, I went to the Mediterranean. After spending two weeks in Greece and Turkey, prayer walking the red-light district of Athens, hearing the sounds of Muslim prayer calls in Istanbul, and talking to a Turkish pastor, God gave me a new vision of life through an advancing vision of who He has always been.

I remember the first day in Greece, returning from prayer walking past countless brothels. One of the young college students on the team turned to the missionaries who led the walk, and asked what we were all thinking: “How do you go into such dark places, talking to the women in those brothels, and stay strong in the Light?”

“That’s easy,” responded one missionary, “God promises to be with the brokenhearted, and where He is, the ground is holy. Sometimes I feel when entering a brothel that I should take off my sandals, ‘for it is holy ground.’” Growing up protected in a wonderful Christian family, I had only ever known God as the God who “wraps himself in light” (Psalm 104:2, NIV). Now, God was beginning to show me that while He is the Light of the world, He is still the God who “makes darkness His covering, His canopy around Him” (Psalm 18:11, NIV). I had never realized before that Moses’ exceptional relationship with God came, because while all the people stood merely watching afar off, “Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21).

For the first time in my life, I realized that whenever it seemed I was entering (for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s sake) into a more impure, more spiritually dark situation, when my heart turned to Christ, His light around me would become all the more overwhelming, and every shadow seemed to be swallowed up beneath the pinions of the Almighty (Psalm 91:4). But had we not been told this truth about our God long ago? Did not our Lord Jesus Christ also face the demonic, because only He had the answer to the destructive forces of sin in the unreached corners of the earth (Mark 5:2)? Did not David say that “if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Psalm 139:8)?

Lord, send me!

As I began to know these truths about God’s character, my prayers about mission work changed. Since I was a toddler, I had prayed God would send me as a missionary, but now I added to that prayer: “Lord, I know You dwell also in darkness. Send me into the blackest, darkest place on earth, where Your name has not been heralded, where the most impure of sinners sit as captives in the bonds of sin and Christless deaths. To them I would go, with God as my Light.”

By the time the opportunity to intern in Cambodia arose, God had brought me to such an understanding of His omnipresence that the comments I received from the public were only fuel to the fire of ambition to go.

“Really? Is it dark with trials? Is it so Christless? That is exactly what I prayed for!”

In May of this year, right before my internship in Cambodia, God gave me one last Scripture passage that would encapsulate all He had been teaching me up to then. It came one day when I was reading the instructions for temple building in 1 Kings. When both the tabernacle (Exodus 25-31) and temple (1 Kings 5-7) were built, there were two rooms on the inside: the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. The first of the rooms was lit by the golden menorah (lampstand), but the second room, the Holy of Holies, remained unlit. Not only was it unlit but it was also covered by layers of curtains which kept the room completely quiet, concealing thick darkness within. But where did God dwell in glory? In the Holy of Holies, in the dark, where He was the only Light (1 Kings 8:10-11). Surely, “Yahweh has said he would dwell in thick darkness” (1 Kings 8:12).

Would we meet with God within His very chamber? Would we know Him so intimately? May we then be willing to enter the darkness like the yearly high priest, alone yet not alone.

The answer to why is Who

So, when I arrived as an intern in Cambodia this summer, I got to see these truths about God in action. My vision had changed since my earliest mission trip days, and even since my first time in Cambodia the year prior. I was able to see my dear and beloved, Christless Khmer people as precious souls, none too far for God’s light to reach, and none dwelling in a darkness into which we who abide in Christ cannot enter with the gospel.

While I previously would have shielded myself from the darker stories, God showed me it is those into which we must enter, one hand clasped to the torch of His light and the other in His own nail-pierced hand. This time, when we prayer-walked through the red-light district, talked to sinners whose stories told of the wretchedness of hell-bound lives, and prayed over the noises of chants from the village temple, my soul was filled with joy at the privilege of getting to be one light among all God’s people whom He had sent to declare to Cambodia’s captives, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1).

Arise, my beloved Cambodia. Come forth unto His glorious light. And arise, my soul, bless the name of Him who has kept His promise, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). Arise, my brethren, and go forth into a world of darkness, unafraid of all but your God.

We must no longer ask ourselves questions about the places to which God called us to go or question what He is commanding us to do. The question we need to be asking is, “Who then is this …?” (Mark 4:41).

There will be objections, trials, and parasites in the Master’s harvest fields, but that is not our concern. We know who our God is, and we believe Him. The only answer to the world’s “why” has always been and always will be the character of our God (Job 42:5).

The Master is calling, oh men and women of God: “You follow Me!” (John 21:22, NIV).

Scripture references are ESV unless otherwise noted.

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