Morning Tea

     Each morning, I enjoy two cups of hot tea to go along with my whole grain cereal and blueberries.  It's a breakfast that's healthy and filling - and tasty too.  While I was sipping on my hot tea this morning, I was thanking God for blessing me with this abundance of good food and I began thinking of the many people who were involved in getting this food to my table - especially the tea.

    As I enjoyed the smooth, rich taste of the Darjeeling tea in my cup, I imagine a woman walking along the rows of Camellia sinensis bushes, grown on steep hillsides of the Eastern Himalayas in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal India.  I've seen pictures such as the one below (from Wikipedia) of women working on the tea plantations there.

    I picture this woman plucking the top two leaves and a bud from each bush and placing them in her basket.  The woman is most likely a Gorkha Indian and a Hindu (70% of the people there are Hindu, 27% are Muslim, with less than 1% claiming Christianity).

    Hand-picking tea leaves is far superior to machine picking.  Each tea picker's careful selection of leaves adds a personal touch to the final product.  And so, I thought about the young woman who  plucked the leaves that made up my lovely cup of Darjeeling tea.

    I wonder, what are the needs of this woman?  What about her family life and her dreams of the future?  Part of her work and the leaves she touched traveled many thousands of miles to America, ending up adding flavor and enjoyment to my cup of Darjeeling tea.  What an amazing journey for those tiny little leaves that grew on the hillside of the Himalayas, basking in the sunshine and rain of that faraway place.  

    I prayed for this woman - living a life far different than my own in a place far different than my home -- and yet, as women, not so very different.  I prayed for her needs and for God to bless her.  You see, God knows who this mystery woman is, and He loves her.  He knows every beat of her heart and, I believe, He is pleased that someone is praying for her.

    In fact, I have added her to my prayer list and I hope someday in Heaven that I might meet her, because I'm praying for her salvation too.  I pray that the Holy Spirit will work a miracle in her heart and show her the way to eternal redemption through Jesus Christ.  God is able and I'm trusting Him to take these prayers and work a work that would blow my mind!!

"Look among the nations and watch - be utterly astounded!  For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you," Habakkuk 1:5.

"Many, O LORD, my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered," Psalm 40:5.

"This was the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes," Psalm 118:23.