Provision that comes to you

One of the interesting things we have found living in Ban Phrueksa in rural Chachoengsao Province, Thailand, is that you don’t have to really go anywhere to buy the essentials of life.  Traveling vendors selling goods of all kinds come into the community throughout the day.
Fresh meat, fresh produce, fish swimming in tanks in the back of a pickup, new and used pants, brooms, eggs (duck or chicken), miscellaneous hardware and household goods.  Even cooked food is sold on the street by stationary or mobile vendors (best way to get our Isaan style chicken and papaya salad is from a motorcycle with a side car modified with a grill and mini-kitchen.)
And while the prices may be a bit pricier than what you find in the market—it saves driving 6 kilometers to a convenience store and the nearest market that only functions twice a week.

Ingrid buying produce off a pickup truck

Grilling chicken on a modified motorcycle

It’s nice when something good comes to you rather than you having to go get it.
That’s one of the things that’s nice about Christianity.  It’s about God coming to us.
In most other religions, it is about how we can get to God.  What kinds of things must I do in order that God will hear me or let me approach Him?  What must I do to be a better person?
I think of so many people who are concerned about their eternal future that are trying to do good things in order that maybe, if they outweigh the bad things, they’ll be better off in some future life.  But there is no guarantee and certainly not a lot of hope.  Call it making merit, or doing good works, or whatever.  Not that there is anything wrong with doing good things, in fact, they should be done.
But with Christianity, it is about God coming to us.  It is about God sending Jesus to earth so that we can relate to Him.  And then it is about Him doing the work for us, on the cross, in order that we might be righteous in the eyes of God.  it’s not about whether we’re good enough—try as we might, we never will be—but about the fact that Jesus is good enough.
And so I do good works, not to attain salvation or to find my way to God, but as an act of love toward a God who drove His pickup into my community, offering all that I could ever need—and I don’t even have to pay for it.



⁹ This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him.
¹⁰ This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
¹¹ My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other.
¹² No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!1 John 4:9-12 (MSG)

Spirit of Addiction

Betel Offering for the Spirits
Originally uploaded by SierraSunrise

Of the many offerings on the altar at the spirit house in our community is Betel chewing packs containing betel leaves, areca palm nuts (หมาก), tobacco and other ingredients that are chewed together. Which raises the questions:

Is this to keep the spirits addicted?

Or are they offerings to the spirits of addiction?

In any case it is interesting that it shows that these spirits have as much a problem with pleasure-seeking and gratifying the "flesh" as do humans.

Makes me glad that we serve a God who is above such things, who is able to help us who struggle with such things.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15-ESV)