Beauty in Simplicity

Fun fact: if you hang chickens instead of cutting their heads off and letting them run around, then you will have more regular dead chickens than the Sleepy Hallow version. I only know because yesterday while visiting a small village about an hour out of Chiang Mai, I witnessed it. At first from a distance we thought that the chickens were fighting because of all the movement, but after walking by, and realizing that they were really struggling to stay alive, did we knew what was really going on. Maybe the headless chickens run away sometimes which makes for a less protein filled meal.
After have the encounter with the chickens and walking around for a bit, also confirming the fact that all Thai people are very smiley, the weekly church meeting was held. Now this was a very different service than back home. There were no special lights, no full band pumping a precise amount of decibels into the crowd, no funny video that tied into the message and not really much of a plan. Instead it was about ten faithful villagers sharing the room with tons of bugs, most I had never seen before, a very large fly that sounded more like a motorcycle than a fly, a very large gecko and us. Although I could not understand more than five words of the message, it was one of the best Church experiences I have ever had. Seeing what little possessions they had and what little they had to work with, and yet the joy of the Lord still exploded from them as they worshiped with just a single guitar strumming the melody and as they took to heart the words from the pastor. The old man next to me brought his reading glasses, which were just frames, lenses and a rubber band to keep them on his head to follow along in one of his few possessions, his Bible. Most of the people there we had seen either come in from the fields or come home from their jobs only a short while before. Throughout the service I could not stop thinking how beautiful the simplicity of it all was. There were no distractions. It wasn’t a show, it was just church. Only a pastor and a faithful group who all took the role of greeter so it wasn’t just one smiling face to greet you, but a whole congregation. How beautiful the body of Christ is.