Where Have You Been?

I recently listened to the excellent book The Rent Collector, a novel about a family in Cambodia who live at the capital city’s garbage dump along with hundreds of others.  The family that the book is based on are real people, and the novel was inspired by the documentary River of Victory about these people that lived at the Cambodian dump.  This weekend I watched the film with my family and was humbled to see the kind of conditions that they live in.  The American man who filmed the documentary, Trevor Wright, clearly got to know well the main family in the documentary and became a close friend.  The mother is named Sang Ly, and after the documentary a short follow-up film shows Trevor returning with his dad (who was also the author of the book) to Cambodia to find Sang Ly four years after their initial meeting.  The footage of their initial encounter with Sang Ly in that visit was moving and gives cause for reflection to us that have so much.  She was clearly happy to see him, but she also said to him, “I’m mad. I’m not doing well.  Where have you been?”  She explained, “You used to come and see me so often… and now when things are so hard for us you haven’t come to see us at all.”  She and her husband were even worse off economically than they had been before, they were about to get kicked out of their “home” again, and she had recently tried to commit suicide.  That it took Trevor four years to get back to see her is completely understandable—and the fact that he went back at all shows the love he had for her and this people.  But seeing the encounter made me wonder if any of those I have at some point in my life been friends with or helped or come to love would say the same thing to me.  How many of those I could perhaps lift or reach out to do I fail to remember?  

               The scriptural phrase that comes to mind is one from Amos, who chastised the people of Israel saying that they “lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, … drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph” (Amos 6:4, 6).  In other words, they lived in their comfort and ease and would not help the poor and afflicted around them.  It is easy to be comfortable in our “beds of ivory” and fail to search out ways to help those in desperate need.  The parable of the rich man who “was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day” is a sobering one to those who similarly are clothed well and eat well every day.  This unnamed man failed to help the beggar Lazarus who sat at his gate, and eventually Lazarus died and was taken to “Abraham’s bosom.”  The rich man then died and went to hell, with Abraham saying to him, “Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things” (Luke 16:19-25).  It’s as if Abraham was telling him, “Well, you got to choose whether you wanted a temporary reward in mortality or an eternal reward thereafter, and you chose the former.”  As Jesus would say, “they have their reward” in this life, but He admonished His followers to seek the “riches of eternity” instead of those of the earth (Matt. 6:2, D&C 68:31).

               After speaking about the pioneers and those who were physically rescued from starvation and freezing on the plains, President Hinckley said, “There are so many who are hungry and destitute across this world who need help. I am grateful to be able to say that we are assisting many who are not of our faith but whose needs are serious and whom we have the resources to help. But we need not go so far afield. We have some of our own who cry out in pain and suffering and loneliness and fear. Ours is a great and solemn duty to reach out and help them, to lift them, to feed them if they are hungry, to nurture their spirits if they thirst for truth and righteousness.”  As Christians our task is to find ways to help and lift all who are around us, and hopefully we can do so before in their suffering they say to us, “Where have you been?”