A few days removed from my time in Africa, I can think of no better time to write my last thoughts than on the best day to be an American, the 4th of July. This will be long, so if you're not into long posts you can click away.
I remember talking to Danielle a little bit before I left on how to explain the question that everyone will ask, "What did you learn there?" She told me that, for her, it is hard to explain what you have learned on trips like this to someone because most lessons are taught to her days, weeks or months after she returns. I look at it as looking at a puzzle. I can sit (for six weeks) right on top, connecting it together piece by piece...but it isn't until that I back away from the completed mural that I see what form it has taken. God, I believe, teaches lessons in no particular way (duh, i know) and just when I think that God is in the middle of teaching me something specific, he is preparing a totally different surprise on stage left.
"So, you're telling me that as of now you have learned nothing..."
No, there are things that as I listened to the star spangled banner and thought about the country that I live in that I have already learned. More than anything, I have put a face to everything that I have heard about the poor.
Zuleka is a woman who lives in a very poor part of Red Hill, but volunteers her time to help with kids clubs.
Apeowei is an adorable kid living in a house made of material that we would leave on the side of the interstate.
Malcolm is a man in the HIV/AIDS Health Care Center who's bed is in the back left corner who reads books. (unpictured)
Peter is a man who has faced more hard times than anyone
would want to face and is living out some of his decisions on the street in Muizenberg.
And I used to look like this:
Remember playing peek-a-boo as a child? Or hide-and-seek? When you are that young, you always assume that if you cover your eyes and you are in total darkness, then nobody else around you can see you, and that everything around you fades away and doesn't really exist. It was so easy to close my eyes and not believe that there are actual people behind the statistics and the pictures that far away from home. Nobody really lives in these homes....if I don't see them, then they don't see me.
I have learned that this isn't a fairy tale, or just a news headline. To someone living in suburban America like myself, it is so far away from what we know that it may seem imaginary, but I've seen it. This is why God stresses it so much in the Bible to care for those less fortunate.....nowhere in the Bible does it say, "Care for the less fortunate...but only if they live in your country. The ones that are miles away can fend for themselves."
It is commanded to care for the poor. Isaiah 58 is wonderful in explaining this....I like the way The Message puts it:
What I'm interested in seeing you do is: Sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage.
Just to make sure here, I don't say these things because I have figured it all out or am going to be perfect for the rest of my life on this topic, because I am far from it and am bound to fall. I just want to remind us to all uncover our eyes, and that just because we can't see or touch the poor where we live, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Give.
Give to ministries that help the poor. Go out and serve where you live. Support missionaries that are caring for the poor. I remember writing about a quote from Donald Miller at the beginning of this trip that says something about going away from the city because you will forget that God made more than just buildings and concrete streets. Well, I feel like I gained that experience but I also found that the beautiful voices of Masiphumelele come from the same mouths that God created like mine. Names. Faces. Stories. People doing good.
God is still teaching me about what I saw in Africa, and all in all it was some of the best weeks of my life. I apologize that this is very much a flow of my last thoughts. (hence the Chicken Soup reference...blah...)
I feel like this wasn't the last time I will see Africa. So until then...
Romans 1:12
