Among the billions of God's bright stars

WORLD reporter Sophia Lee recently traveled through Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and other Southeast Asian countries. She has been sending us regular reports of what she saw, felt, and did—Nellie Bly–style.

On my last day in the Burmese mountains, I woke up before dawn, when billions of stars still twinkled and gleamed against a deep purplish-indigo sky. It was an unusually cold morning, so I bundled up, poured myself a flask of hot Earl Grey tea, and rolled out my sleeping bag over a giant rock in the middle of the field. I then laid back and gazed up at a sky so speckled with silver that my breath caught in my throat.

It was then I remembered that millenniums ago, somewhere in the Middle East, an aging, heirless man named Abram also gazed upward and put his faith in God’s promise: “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.” God then changed the man’s name from Abram to Abraham—“father of multitudes.”

Perhaps Abraham’s vision of God’s plan was limited to fathering one nation, Israel—but today, we “seeds of Abraham” have centuries of revelatory hindsight to understand that God had grander plans to extend His blessings to all nations. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has grafted to Israel millions more spiritual descendants who inherit the same powerful covenant between God and Abraham.

This thought summarizes the insights I gained from my two-months-long trek in Southeast Asia. I looked up at the countless stars scattered wide and vast out of my periphery and thought, “So too are God’s people throughout the history of this world.” Often I live within my own little galaxy, but God gazes upon the entire spread of such little galaxies across history and geography.

No journalist with a soul remains detached from her sources and stories, especially when sloshy buckets of human tears and sweat are involved. I met and broke bread with Christians of various ethnicities in various nations, which connected me with many Christians facing persecution because of their faith. But I’ve also observed and interacted with Christians and churches dulled and distracted by the sulfurous smoke from the abyss—attractive cultures, ideologies, and theologies devoid of truth and spirit.

I also saw that there’s another powerful personality that stares at this spread of God’s beautiful stars and writhes with rage and hatred. In every country I glimpsed a little bit more of Satan’s handiwork: how he attacks, how he cheats, how he manipulates politics, law, religion, the economy, and culture in order to systematically and intricately prevent the preaching and expansion of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I saw all this, and felt both fright and anger at the cunning and active schemes of the devil.

But that’s not just happening in Southeast Asia. Our enemy’s project is global, targeting any soul that twinkles with the light of Christ against darkness. The spiritual weapons attacking God’s people in the West differ from those in the East, but the enemy and his mission are the same.

Nellie Bly traipsed around the world in 72 days in her signature checkered coat, which made her one of the most famous women of her time at the budding age of 25. She returned home to hurrahing crowds who waved flowers and fruits and welcomed her as a celebrity, a triumphant symbol of what an independent, plucky, energetic woman can do.

I bumbled around five Southeast Asian countries in 57 days and returned bleary-eyed, one year older, and to my mother’s homemade kimchee. Unlike Nellie Bly, I remain as fameless as before, and I rather like that. My travels have reminded me how very small I am—merely a glimmer among the billions of bright stars. I remember once pulling an Elijah, self-righteously wailing, “God, all have forsaken you! Only I remain, all alone!” And over the last two months God opened my eyes that thousands more unseen people remain faithful to Him.

Unlike Nellie Bly, I come back not elated but with great sorrow and burdens for my brothers and sisters across oceans—budding remnants who need much shepherding and prayers. But my travels also instilled in me a heart-squeezing awe at how much God cares and looks after every microscopic glitter amidst all the other silver dots in a fallen, embattled era. Thus I saw that the Word of God has never failed, and that His faithfulness, love, and grace for His chosen people persist.

If I bring back any triumph, it’s not as a symbol of feministic independence or the mightiness of America as Nellie Bly was, but as a humbled witness of desperate dependence upon God and His sovereignty over all nations.