100 not out ... #1

This year marks the centenary of WEC International.

It is great to give thanks for what the Lord has done these last 100 years with and through the WEC fellowship - but I also wanted to mark what is happening in the world today ... So here are some more details ...

"My name is Malcolm Gray, living in Thailand with my wife Kerstin and ten-year old daughter, Amy. We are a family of ‘missionary kids’ – or ‘MKs’ according to mission lingo. My daughter and I were born in Thailand. My wife was born in Burundi, each of us to missionary parents – who are not coined ‘MPs’ by the inconsistent lingo! Our passports state that we are British and Swedish, though, if my Dutch mother was the type, she may feel slightly hard done by – but she’s not. She taught me about grace rather than being Dutch. And that’s what we aim to teach the Thai – what Grace is as opposed to what being Dutch (or British or Swedish or any other flag-defined identity) is.

My first glimpse of the less smiley side of Thai society came after about four months here during a gap year I spent in Thailand when I was twenty years old. I was single then working at a Christian radio studio. Living on my own I used to walk down my lane daily for meals and social interaction. Though born in Thailand, I had grown up in the Philippines and this Buddhist setting was very new for me. On my lane lived such friendly, hospitable people. Their smiles priceless.

Until one day....

The toothy smiles were on show, but the Holy Spirit enabled me to see something I hadn’t observed before. Their eyes were not smiling. I saw fear and hopelessness where I had wrongly assumed peace and contentment not long before. I rushed back to my room and wept. For two weeks. Couldn’t stop crying. Didn’t know what I could do about the fear. What did I have to offer? How could I communicate it? ‘Lord, touch their eyes!’

He wanted to touch mine....

 

Seventeen years on, and I’m beginning to see. Grace is the antidote to Karma. And you will find permutations of Karma thinking across the world, from East to West. The Thai saying sums it up well, ‘Tham dii, dai dii. Tham chua, dai chua.’ – Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad. Karma is like gravity – it is a force. It is impersonal and follows the laws of nature. If this blog began by sharing with you my experiences of levitation, you may not had arrived at this paragraph. You and I don’t question the law of gravity. It does what it does because forces and laws exist. In this country Karma is accepted and respected in similar fashion.

It is into that context that we step forward with Grace – the antithesis to Karma. Day in, day out, that is the tide we face. Living Grace. Speaking Grace. Sharing Grace. Choosing not to fear the mess. Again and again. The beauty of a God of Grace is evident – the challenge: to help the Central Thai receive it as a reality and not just a fairytale.

By His grace, I can see the tide turning.

Interested in knowing more, praying for the work or joining the team? www.wec-thailand.org or contact me directly at mkgray@bigfoot.com