Beautifully Hopeless

On our first full day in country, we were able to go spend some time in Angkor Wat at the ancient temples/cities. This wasn’t my first time there, but it was my first time there in seven years. The surreal feeling came back of it feeling like the first time, but having the knowledge of the history of the place, in some ways, kept that in check. There was a heavy presence as we entered the gates.

If you don’t know much about the Angkor city history, it goes back a couple thousand years, a few different kings, and stretches around 154 square miles. Where we spent the majority of the time was Angkor Wat. The central temple is about 402 acres, so if you watch football, just imagine, give or take, 400 football fields. To build something of that magnitude today would be quite the undertaking, but to do it over 1,200 years ago seems nearly impossible.

The structures themselves are very impressive—the way the blocks sit together, even the ones with curved or angled cuts, to where there look to be no seams because the blocks sit so tightly. I do home remodeling, and it’s nearly impossible to have trim work sit perfectly to where you don’t need caulking or putty to fill in the gaps, even in the new home builds of today.

We entered the temple from the south gate, which had an old block pathway leading into the central area. It was approximately 500 yards from the outer gate to the first inner gate. As we walked down the path and you looked ahead, everything was built to align perfectly with the center temple structure, which towers over everything else. If you were to go there for the summer solstice and enter from the north gate, you would see the sun rise directly above the center temple structure. Everything revolves around this one point. Kind of the same idea as how they built PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The first thing they did was put home plate down and then built everything else around it.

If you want to learn more, there are tons of YouTube videos and documentaries that would do a way better job of explaining this all to you than I would.

Our purpose for going there was not to just look at old rocks and carvings and take in some history. We went there with a purpose: to bring the presence of God. We were prayer walking while there, praying for the people we were walking past or observing. Praying for the monks, praying against the spirits/gods of the Buddhist and Hindu religions. We were not loud and boisterous; we were quiet and unsuspecting, making sure to be respectful, and to be honest, we wanted to go unnoticed.

As I walked through the ancient hallways and doors, I made my way to the center of the temple. I chose not to walk up the stairs to the high point, mostly because the line was too long, but instead to go where the ancient swimming pools were. All in that area were ancient Buddhist and Hindu carved gods, some with heads, some without. Some snake-like, some human-like, some very well maintained, some not. The smell of incense was extremely potent, one, due to there being ceilings and not much airflow, but also due to the number of people lighting it to use to pray to their gods and for their family and friends.

As I stood there watching and praying from a distance, I felt a very heavy weight on my shoulders and chest, and not from the air, but from the spiritual environment. The hopelessness, the knowledge that even though they may have thousands of gods to pray to, none of them are going to answer. Why? Because they don’t exist, and they never have.

All of the statues, all of the carvings, all of the rituals, all of the incense, all of the prayers and worship lead to nothing. It leads to emptiness. It leads to a life of unfulfillment and a life that, in the end, leads to a separation from the one true God.

The one and only LIVING GOD who can give hope, who answers prayers, who deserves all the worship, who gives fulfillment and peace, who gives purpose and has a plan for your life. As I stood there praying and observing, that’s all I wanted those people to realize: that there is a God who has a Son named Jesus, who died for them because He loves them, who isn’t dead but was raised and is now in heaven with the Father.

As I made my way through the center of the temple and towards the northern gate, we passed hundreds, if not a couple thousand, people. People from all around the world journey there to find enlightenment—old, young, every race—all searching for something that isn’t there. It’s like playing hide-and-seek and you’re the seeker, but nobody is hiding.

Every other religion makes people go on a journey to find their god, whether it’s a temple in Cambodia or the mountains of the Himalayas, but not Jesus. He will meet you right where you are: on your couch, in your office, or in your car. Wherever you might be right now reading this, He will meet you there. All you need to do is ask Him to join you wherever you are.

There is a God. He has a Son named Jesus, who died for you to save you from the punishment of sin because He loves you, who rose from the dead to take His seat next to the Father and conquered death so we have the opportunity to have a relationship with Him.