First Cry

You knit me together in my mother’s womb. You saw me before I was born.

Psalm 139:13, 16

“Be here at 7:00 AM.” Dr. Sarah left us in the garden after dinner.

Night fell quickly over John Bishop Memorial Hospital (JBM) in Anantnag, Jammu-Kashmir, India. It had been a busy day of travel for the medical mission team. We met Dr. Sarah, head of the 110-year-old Christian obstetrical hospital, and organized to begin clinics in the region. The guesthouse on the hospital grounds made it easy to meet in the morning. The beds were very comfortable, air cool, blankets warm.

The sun peeked over the mountaintop as we straggled into the garden filled with the heady scent of blooming red and yellow roses. Jet lag and the general confusion of getting started in an unfamiliar place had us there a little after 7:00 for what we had assumed would be a tour of the facility.

A young woman in scrubs ran into the small, grassy area. “Hurry. You are late!”

She rushed us into the hospital building and shoved packages at us. “Put these on. Hurry!”

Inside the blue wrappings were cloth surgical gowns, masks, gloves, hats, and shoe covers. We fumbled into the garb, helping one another to tie the ties, laughing at the sight we had become, wondering what would happen next. The young woman returned and ushered us into another room—a delivery room.

Dr. Sarah stood on one side of the table with a nurse on the other side. She didn’t greet us, intent on the incision she was making in the abdomen of the woman lying there. We moved out of the way and watched. Seconds later, instead of holding a scalpel, Dr. Sarah’s gloved hands reached into the woman and emerged with a baby. A lusty cry filled the delivery suite. New life had emerged from the darkness of the womb into the light. The cord was cut, the mother greeted her newborn daughter, and the nurse hurried the child to a vintage bassinette right beside me.

The nurse dressed the infant in layers of clothing, wrapped her in a thick blanket, and then went to fill out paperwork, leaving me alone. I grazed the soft cheek and laid my hand on the now-sleepy baby. And lifted this new life in prayer to Jesus with an intensity that surprised me.

As I prayed, it occurred to me that God could use this one life to change a nation, starting with her family. Although Muslim, her mother and father had come to a Christian hospital for her birth and for care. Their hearts were in some way open. And where an opening exists, the Holy Spirit can come in.

Even as I prayed, my mind envisioned a Kashmir—an entire India—where the first cry of a baby became the first cry of souls hungry for the Lord. This child, barely three minutes old, could be a drop of Jesus rippling through her family, her village, her state, and her nation. Far-fetched? From a human perspective, certainly. From God’s almighty vision and plan? Just an inkling of what His power could accomplish.

Soon enough the nurse returned, other team members crowded around the bassinette, and the moment passed. We saw mom and baby the next day in the ward before we left the hospital. I stopped long enough to pray with them. Although the prayer was in English, this mother understood that it was being sent to Jesus on behalf of her family and her child. 

What does this touching—but random—encounter mean to anyone else? Maybe nothing. After all, no one reading this will ever meet this baby, watch as she grows up, know what happens to her. It’s just a mission story. Or is it?

The key to medical missions—all missions—is not stuff, money, or even teaching. It is relationship. What we present is ourselves, the temple of the Holy Spirit. We carry Him with us. He touches those we touch. He holds those we hold. He hears the first cry of those who cry out to us. And He uses us as witnesses to the many who are potential workers for the harvest.

The staff at JBM needs you to pray, as they are a Christian presence in a Muslim region. Turmoil surrounds them in the form of ongoing war, virus, government mandates, and shortages of supplies. We who have been blessed are called to listen for God’s call as to how we each fit into His perfect plan.

The small life that took a first breath, uttered a first cry, experienced her first prayer that day in a hospital set amidst sheep herds and towering mountain peaks is today two years old. I imagine her toddling around her house in bare feet, starting to babble in Kashmiri or Urdu, eating a fistful of rice.

Does she know Jesus? The introduction has been made. His Word will not return to Him empty. Because He knew this child before He ever knit her together in her mother’s womb.

Everything begins with a single moment. Be part of that moment as we stand in the gap and pray for this nation. Your first cry in prayer might be the one that sends ripples of Jesus throughout India.