An old man's question

Today was my first full day in Moscow. The sky was grey; snowflakes of various sizes fell in individual flights to the ground. The apartment was cozy, the chai was hot, and the breakfast was a varity of cheesecake--not sweet but served with sour cream and homemade huckleberry jam. Yummm.

Zhenia and Irina decided to spend time in the sun and get some exercise, so we got bundled up and left the apartment to take the Metro (two lines and eight stops) to a forested park on the east side of the outskirts of Moscow. The overcast grey of the sky and the whiteness of the snow and the quietness of the forest were the main impression. The park is just a few stair steps down from the metro station, making the transition from the busyness on the underground tubes to the serenity in the woods one that is abrupt and comprehensive.

The path in the forest is completely white. The streets in the city are dirty muddy slush. The white trail of packed snow leads on and on in a quiet, slow-paced stroll. The people are as comfortable in this snow forest as they will be next summer when it is a green forest. Some feed the birds, walk their dog, stroll in pairs, or walk alone in contemplation. Some are moving more quickly on very narrow skis that are for gliding along on the level ground. The only color was a small stand of bushes with red bark.

I stopped for a photo of the red bushes, and a 93-year-old man who asked me what I was taking pictures of. He only spoke Russian, and I only spoke English, so Zhenia translated a bit. Indicating that I was taking pictures of the bushes with red bark, the old gentleman was a bit puzzled. I think he hesitated for a bit in order to find a way to explain why he thought what I was doing was somewhat foolish. So he asked, Have you ever starved? I had no more than a one-word answer, Never. I have never starved. The conversation turned to other things when his daughter from Tajikistan came up. I studied the man, and there was no hint left of hard times. He had a new, comfortable, furry brown coat, and the collar was a nice rust-colored wool. The hat was of camel-colored fur in the Russian style of having the ear flaps tied up across the top of the hat. His face had color, even though it had the smooth translucence of old skin. The eyes were the grey blue of the sky.

No hint of hunger, but his question was still important to him because when the sisters spoke of the Lord to the daughter, he interrupted to complain that he was not well cared for--the family was too far away. The daughter had to explain that they lived so far away and that it takes a visa to visit him. So even though he has food in these days, he is still hungry. We walked on, and after a slow two hours through the woods, we left.

Over bowls of hot vegetable soup, Zhenia told of the time when lunch was only a beet, a cube of bouillon, and a bit of tomato paste. She didn't know what they would have for dinner that day, let alone the next day. There was no bread in the stores. This was in the 90s, but Irina reminded her that there was the time in 2000 when things were not going very well in some rural parts, and one family they know had very little at all to eat then. The family is doing better now, but it was a time when the Lord was rich to them. And times like this could happen to anyone.

Later Liza, Zhenia's daughter, told us a about how three girls waved the tracts away when she and a sister preached this gospel this afternoon, but another girl did receive the gospel, and an older woman at a stall selling things in the market told them that she didn't know that God so loved the world that He sent His Son. Then we pulled out the outline for tomorrow morning and prayed over one rich sentence.