Dear friends and family,
I am writing this from an internet café in Calcutta-only hours before my team and I fly back to Kathmandu, only hours since I was surrounded by the flood waters of the devastated West Bengal countryside. As I sit here I am trying to put my thoughts together and write something from my heart, something that I know God wants me to share with you. But all I can think of are the pictures that are etched in my memory. They are pictures that come from witnessing the worst flooding in the history of eastern India.
A few hours ago, I witnessed a naked child wading through the murky water that was once the yard of her home. Her tiny hut with its thatched walls and straw roof had become a sodden pile of compost. Her family's belongings has been washed away and their livestock had drowned. A week before, the water had escaped the banks of the nearby river, turning the entire area into a deadly, shallow sea. Her family was trying to catch fish out of a field that probably was theirs. The few fish they might catch would hardly make up for the hopes for this season's crops and the income it would bring.
That same day I had been walking through her village as we handed out food packets to the most needy families. We were able to hand out 200, but we could have given out twice that much and still there would be families going to bed hungry that night.
As I walked down the railroad tracks, I passed hundreds of temporary shelters made of woven palm fronds, plastic sheeting, tarps and cardboard. They had been hastily erected along the edge of the railroad access, the only high ground available. A few of us were handing out matches, candles and medicines to the women and cookies to the children. It was so little, but even when I was down to a few boxes of matches, it was gratefully accepted because it was significantly more than they had before.
I could go on. There are many more pictures in my memory and stories to go with them. But what purpose will they serve if we read them and forget about them? But that is what happens. How many remember the cyclone that devastated the east coast of India last fall at the cost of thousands of lives? How many remember the tragedy of the earthquake in Turkey? Even Bosnia and Rwanda become little more than faint memories in our minds. If the stories do not change us as people, then what use are they? I will say this with more directness than I normally would because of the directness of my past week. The Word of God declares to us that if we abandon the poor to their own fate, God will abandon us to ours.
I want to entreat you all to become changed people. Many of you responded so amazingly to the email I sent out requesting funds for the flood relief. But do not let it end with that. Do not let the floods of West Bengal fade in to the distant recesses of your memory. Seek out the poor among you. Uplift the lonely in your midst. Respond to the ignored and outcast with love. Do so for the sake of the One who said, “whatsoever you do for the least of these my children, you do for me.”
Seek justice, live mercifully, walk humbly,
Silas and Kimberly West