By Dudley Kline*
MUMBAI, India — The Bible completely came alive for me this summer. I had never been to India. The people worship statues with eyes that can’t see and ears that can’t hear.
In the States, I’ve read stories in the Bible about beggars and crippled people. But, I couldn’t really relate to the miracles I read about because I don’t see crippled people sitting on the side of the road begging. In Mumbai, they are on every corner.
You have no idea how many times I wanted to walk up to someone sitting on the side of the road and say, “I don’t have any money, but I can pray for the healing of your body and soul.”
One day, my team sat at a railroad station. As I talked to my team, I looked over their shoulders and saw a man with no legs sitting in the middle of the crowd. People walked around him or over him. No one really paid any attention to him. It made me think of all the stories in the Bible where Jesus sat down with the beggars, with all the low people. I felt like God was telling me to do that.
So, I did.
In the middle of this train station, I bought two mango juices and walked over to the man named Angi.* Then, I sat down on the ground next to him. My translator, the pastor in that area, came over and translated as I shared the Gospel.
So, we’re just talking. He’s drinking his mango juice. I’m drinking my mango juice. I look up and there are 20 or 30 people circled around us.
Not very often does anyone sit next to a beggar. It brought a lot of attention, and people listened. The group got big enough that the guards said, “You go somewhere else, it’s causing too much of a scene.” They didn’t tell us to stop, but they said we had to go somewhere else. So, we moved about two hundred yards away from the main gate and the group gathered again.
A man from the crowd called out to me. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” He said, “Are you with some organization supporting beggars?”
I said, “No! I’m a student on holiday and I’m just here in India and I’m telling him and all of you the greatest thing I know.”
Since I knew he had been listening, I said, “What do you think of this?”
The man from the crowd said, “All ways are one.”
I continued sharing stories about Jesus. When I was finished, this man who said that all ways are the same was ready to believe. He said, “This must be the Truth! This must be the Truth!”
The apostles often healed in Jesus’ name. In Acts 3:6, Peter walks up to a beggar who is asking for money and says, “I have no silver or gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (ESV). That’s the kind of faith I want.
—30—
*Name changed.
Dudley Kline is a student at Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Tex. and a member of First Baptist Church, Burkburnett, Tex. He recently spent six weeks in India as an SA101 volunteer. For more information on SA101, visit the website for South Asian peoples, http://southasianpeoples.imb.org/special-interest/sa101/.