Reflection:
During our six years living in Nepal, I made a wonderful friend and prayer partner named Lalu. She grew up in a small Hindu village and her parents never sent her to school, which meant she never learnt to read or write. Then, when she was ten, her mother contracted leprosy and her father left the family. Lalu and her mother travelled to Pokhara where there was a leprosy hospital. Once there, her mother became a Christian through the witness of the Christian staff. Later, Lalu also heard the Gospel and became a Christian. But all the time, she wanted to read the Bible herself, and she couldn’t. She felt ashamed of her background and her illiteracy and the stigma of leprosy. Finally, twenty years later, when Lalu was in her 30’s, a group from church formed a literacy group. Lalu wrote her own name for the first time in her life. She began to read signs on the road. And then, slowly, she began to read her Bible. She loved the Psalms. She told me her favourite was Psalm 25:1-2. Do not let me be put to shame. Before she became a Christian, she had felt so much shame. But when she read Psalm 25, she understood that she didn’t need to feel small anymore. Jesus carried that burden of shame, for her.
Prayer:
Lord, I thank you that you bore the shame for me, so that when I stand before you, I am clean.