India has changed how I read the bible...

Acts 3:1-10.
This passage reminds me so much of India. I have now witnessed what a beggar on the steps of a temple (or church) looks like. It’s simply amazing that Peter and John gave him more than money. In a sense they gave him life. He could now find work, provide for a wife, support a family, and WALK! I'm not a man, but I’ve heard as a man just how good it feels to be able to provide for a family. To have that piece of satisfaction given must have felt amazing. Not to mention being given the chance at giving a receiving love in a martial union! “Silver or gold I do not have but what I do have I give you.” I am not rich, but I have can give my time, energy, love, passion and joy to others. God doesn’t call all of us to just give monetarily. No He calls us to give what He has blessed us with; for some that is money, for others (like me) that is love and energy.
This story has taken on an entirely new meaning for me after being her in India and seeing what a crippled beggar looks like. After seeing the despair in their eyes, and their shriveled feet I have now found a new appreciation for what Peter and John did for this man. A lifetime of sitting day in and day out watching everyone else walk, feeling all sorts of resentment towards them for taking their ability to walk for granted….then being blessed with the opportunity to walk. You know how it feels to sit for a long time in a car and how good it feels to get out and stretch your legs? Multiply that by a lifetime of sitting, and imagine how amazing the feeling of stretching your legs would be! The passage continues to say that the man accompanied Peter and John into the temple; something he had probably never done! I imagine he jumped, danced, skipped, ran, walked, and just used the entire next week to discover all that his legs could do. This passage has taken on an entire new meaning for me now that I can picture vividly the beggar.
Being here in India has opened up my eyes just a little bit to how it must have been in biblical times. A lot of times America is too ‘modern’ to allow our imaginations to fully comprehend all these stories. But being in a less modernized country nudges the imagination thus opening up all new possibilities to all the bible stories. To finally understand just how dirty the disciples’ feet must have been after walking along the dusty roads and know how self-conscious they must’ve felt having their master and Lord wash their feet, or picture the disciples as fishermen in a small wooden boat (like those in Goa), or to even understand how much it must have truly meant for a crippled beggar to be healed. Frankly it’s been amazing to read the bible in a whole new light; with brand new eyes!
Reading the bible as a story-book and not some mandatory 10-minute devo has changed my perspectives on the significance of a lot of the stories, and given me the opportunity to derive new implications with excitement from these stories. Soaking them up as I would a Harry Potter book or a good chick-flick is regrettably something I have never done before. But thank God for my imagination, and for spurring my imagination to new heights. I’ve found that you can obtain substantially different outlooks just from placing yourself in these stories as the different characters—for example in this Acts 3 story I’ve imagined myself as the beggar, stretching my legs for the VERY first time, jumping for the very first time feeling how it feels to be momentarily suspended in air, and feeling uncontrollable excitement that causes my entire body to tremble. How it must’ve felt to come to the realization that I would never again be forced to sit and beg, but instead work for what I earn; to feel the satisfying feeling of a full days’ work.
I then placed myself in the shoes of his wife. She may or may not have existed, the bible doesn’t say, but if she did exist she wasn’t present at the healing. No she was at home cleaning up the small house, tears in her eyes as she lamented at the frustration of having a crippled husband that she both loved and resented. Her knees calloused from all the time spent in bended-knee prayer. Hearing a distant shout and recognizing the voice as her husbands’ but automatically chastising herself for thinking such thoughts, for she’d never really allowed herself to hope before. Gritting her teeth in anger at the thought that God never listened to any of her prayers and blocking out the sound that reminded her so much of her husbands’ voice. Then how startled she must have been as the door flew open and her husband was standing there praising Jesus. How she must have been scared for her life because this couldn’t possibly be her husband! The string of questions that must’ve flown into her head but how the lines connecting her mind to her tongue must have been prohibited. Standing there stammering, a million emotions flooding her, and almost fainting. Her husband running to her to catch her, and for the first time having her husband hold her instead of her holding her husband. How good his strength must have felt to her and how bold her praises to God would have been that night.
I then imagine how it would have been to be in the crowd….the bible mentions the crowd “when all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate….and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.” Here in India you come to recognize beggars because they usually station themselves at the same spots daily. So to be one of ‘the people’ that Acts mentions would alone be such an amazing encounter! How much joy I would have to see any of these crippled beggars get up and walk and praise Jesus. I think just witnessing it would forever change my life. When you witness such joy, it’s hard to not be filled with so much joy yourself. So I can only imagine the joy this beggar had, and how contagious it must have been to all the onlookers.
These are only 3 perspectives into this story, and this is only one of several stories of the bible. It’s simply amazing how the worth of these stories alter based on the outlook that you take! You can derive so much more value from these stories if you employ your imagination just a little bit more! Infact I would encourage you to do so!