Ascend the Hill

I watched a parade in Phnom Penh a few days before the last election, and a few days before I last left Cambodia.  It was this parade – a seemingly endless onslaught of Landcruisers and cargo trucks filled with paid Cambodian People’s Party supporters – that has stuck with me as I have reflected on what my experiences in Cambodia have taught me about myself.  As one of the most corrupt political regimes in the world chanted and cheered their way down the main thoroughfare in southern Phnom Penh, I could only watch mortified at injustice so boldly flaunted.  It was mostly the feeling of hopelessness that grew in me as the parade kept going and going and going.  Working in public education and spending each summer living and working among the poor of third world, this is how the world has revealed itself to me: the more I see of it, the more I see the depth of injustice in it.  Our sin is even deeper and darker than we had ever imagined.

There was a twist this time.  My iconic moment this Trek directed me not further outward but inward, to confront the depth of my own sin – the endless parade of corruption and brokenness in my own life.  It is all there and buried deep.  It is in how I see myself, in how I relate with others, in my aimless designs for my future, and in how I react to the daily happenings of my life.  Once you start looking, there is always more to see – layers upon layers upon layers.  It is at times easier to get angry and motivated to action by the wrong we see in the world – do we carry this same revolutionary spirit when we see our own brokenness?  Is it not the more fitting task to set right our own lives before we go out and attempt to set the lives of others?

Ascend the Hill is about a season of pursuing personal holiness – about clean hands and a pure heart, and about seeking His face.  Psalm 24.

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