Finding love in unlikely places

Sometimes love finds you in a tuk tuk, searching for a computer repair shop.

It had been two long weeks of ministry in Sri Lanka. I had traveled to Asia with my non-profit. Every day, after ministering to mothers, I would update my team and our partners back home. I would write blog posts and send photos. It’s what I’d been doing the past decade and for much of it, I depended on my laptop.

After a particularly long day, I went to turn on my computer. The screen wouldn’t register. I cried. I called my dad who is a tech-whiz. He gave me pointers and I tried all of them. None of them worked. I cried some more, and then I slept.

In the morning I awoke, sure of a miracle. But no. The screen still wouldn’t turn on.

After another long day of ministry, my colleague and I set out in a tuk tuk to the only computer repair shop open – a place called Future Tech.

The streets were dark and the shop hidden. We had to pass through an alley, then another, and we began to doubt ourselves until we suddenly came upon a store full of light and color and glass windows. Behind the counter sat a man with kind eyes and a beard. He was eager to help, and I handed him my laptop.

Noodles & processors

Soon, his wife and daughter emerged from the back. They asked us about our lives, brought us tea, served us noodles.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed: my processor was fried. My colleague then mentioned he just happened to have a brand-new laptop which he’d be happy to give me. The family offered to take him back to our guesthouse so he could grab it.

I kept waiting for the ball to drop. I kept waiting for me to have to pay for the new laptop, or for the noodles, or for the examination and extraction of my old laptop. But no.

Everyone just kept lavishing love on me. I walked away with my old hard drive, a brand-new laptop and a new family. I wasn’t charged for any of it. It was all, completely, free.

I laughed the whole way back to the guesthouse. I laughed as I went to sleep and I woke up laughing. Where there had been mourning, there was now dancing. Where there were ashes, there was now beauty.

On the way to abundance

This year’s Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. It’s fitting that our Annual Day of Love falls on the beginning of Lent, a season of repentance, yes, but also a season of intimacy with Christ.
It’s fitting, I think, that what might seem dreary and dark and hard falls on a day of lavishing and abundance.

Because ultimately, the road to the cross is the road to victory, a road that looks a lot like the one we took in a tuk tuk, down dark alleys, around hidden corners, to the greatest outpouring of love the world has ever known.