Story Behind the Picture:
It was our second day back in the squatter camps and we had
already struck up quite a few conversations. I looked up to see a lanky 10 year
old girl watching us expressively as she balanced a bag of corn expertly on top
of her head. My fellow interns felt compelled to ask if we could go home with
her and meet her mother. Her eyes lit
up, that was the very thing she was hoping we would ask. She excitedly thread
her way through the shacks, leading us to her home. She ran ahead and excitedly,
announcing in her native tongue that she had brought friends home with her …
We were met by a thin
woman with a lovely smile carrying a darling baby. We found out that our
little guide’s name was Beautiful, her mother’s name was Edith, and her wee
sister’s name was Louis. We settled down, the baby was quick to be kissed and
cuddled by the girls on the team and we began to exchange life
with Edith.
Edith began to tell us about her family. Her husband had
been grotesquely murdered a few years earlier and the killer was still
wandering at will. She didn't have money to send her daughter to school and she
was obviously distraught over the thought. Her parents are no longer living and
she had walked through two miscarriages prior to Life being born. She shared her sorrows gracefully but her
smile had faded and her eyes trembled with tears. She said with tears in her
voice that she prays, but she didn't think God heard her … He didn't answer.
I found myself on my
knees at her feet, peering earnestly into her eyes and saying with the
compassion and conviction that only Jesus can give, “Edith. God hears you. God
sees you. God cares for you. We are living proof of that. He brought us here to
tell you that He hasn't forgotten you!” I was surprised to find tears in my
voice as I willed in my heart for her to believe in God’s goodness. Beautiful stole up beside her mother and
placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. Edith listened. My heart cried at
the sobriety of the situation but in the same moment was overwhelmed with the
intensity of God’s love for this woman.
Different scriptures came alive to me as I shared them with
her. Passages like Psalm 121-
I will lift my eyes
to the hills – from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made
heaven and earth. He will not allow your
foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is
your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the
moon by night. The LORD shall preserve
you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The LORD shall preserve your
going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forever more.
And Psalm 68-
A father of the fatherless, a defender of the widows, is God in His
holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families…
And so we loved, we prayed, and we left her with the only Living Hope there is. We look to the
Author of our life stories, amazed at how He allows us to be knit together with
others as we look to Him as the head. Beautiful
clung to one of the interns in tears as we departed and we in turn clung to His
Hope that we would see this family again, soon.
