The Story Behind the Picture

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.