The testimony of Koeun (1)

Friday March 26, 2021

They wandered in the desert, on their way in arid places, without finding a city where they could live. They suffered from hunger and thirst ; their soul was downcast. In their distress they cried to the Lord, and he delivered them out of their distress : he led them in a straight way, that they might come to a city where they might dwell. Psalm 107. 4-7

The testimony of Koeun (1)

Koeun, a young Cambodian, said : "I was fleeing the Khmer Rouge to save my life. After weeks of wandering, in the cold, hunger and fear, I found myself a prisoner in a neighboring country. There, a person came. tell me about the God of the Bible, so different from the deities invoked by my family and my people. These deities had ignored me in my desperate flight, but did this God of the Bible see inside the Khmer Rouge and beyond ? 'Inside me ? Was he aware of what I was thinking and feeling ? I often had thoughts that I was not proud of, and I was very relieved to know that I was the only one who knew them. Ah, if God came to judge me for all my actions and all my intentions, I would be doomed !"

He then turns to his visitor and says to her : "You tell me that after death, I will be judged by God, and you call that good news ?

- When Jesus Christ died on the cross, she answers, he took the condemnation that we all deserved. If you place your trust in him, you can escape condemnation, be forgiven, and receive the unmerited gift of eternal life. This is the good news of Christianity : an undeserved gift... This notion left me wondering. In the law of Karma Buddhism, there was no place for gratuitousness. That someone could take the consequences of my bad actions upon themselves seemed unthinkable to me. This good news was very different from anything I had heard before."

(end tomorrow)

Source (The Good Seed)