I knelt in the muddy street with my right hand on the knee of a woman I’d just met. My teammates Meggie and Rachel were sitting on either side of Gertrude with their hands on her shoulders, praying for her on the front porch of a bar.
The bar was on the main street of Jonloinga, one of many along the unpaved, rocky road flooded with the night’s rain. My team was doing door-to-door evangelism with a church in this neighborhood, inviting people to services and praying for them. We were walking back towards the church for lunchtime when someone yelled out from one of the bars, “Hey! Mzungu!”
At first, I ignored them. Mzungu- white people- was a constant refrain following us in Jonloinga, a poor area of Lusaka. The drunk men in the bars yelled it before asking us for money or proposing to us. It was hot. I was sunburned. I was ready for lunch.
But the women from the church steered us towards a small rust-orange building with blue letters over the door: “Second Chance Bar.”
Gertrude stood in the doorway, swaying slightly.
She was short and thin- the hardened sort of skinny, like all of her softness had been whittled away long ago. Her tight tank top and yoga pants made her stick out on a street where most women were wearing chatangi– long, brightly printed skirts that reached the ankle. She stumbled a little as she stepped down off the porch to introduce herself.
“Hello, mzungu!” Gertrude said. “I want to be delivered!”
She clapped a hand on her chest. “Me, I drink a lot of beer. And—“ pulling out a small bag of marijuana- “I smoke a lot of this. I am a sinner. I want Jesus to deliver me.”
Rachel, Meggie, and I stood in silence for a second. Gertrude started talking again.
“I am addicted to beer. I want to be delivered,” she said, rocking in the sun in front of the Second Chance.
“Can we pray for you?” Maggie asked, and Gertrude nodded and sat down on the porch. My skirt skimmed the mud as I knelt in front of her and listened to Meggie and then Rachel pray.
A we got up to say goodbye and walked back to the church, I looked back towards the bar and watched Gertrude stumble back through the curtain billowing in the doorway.
She didn’t come to the service we invited her to that day, or the next, which didn’t surprise me. Our interaction was not a miracle. No one was healed or rid of their demons. But I kept thinking about Gertrude thumping her open hand on her bony chest, yelling that she wanted to be delivered.
So often, I am Gertrude. Screaming for deliverance from a hole I dug myself.
But deliverance is only half the battle, it seems to me. The Lord reaches out continually with the offer of grace, and we have to stumble off the porch into the sun and let God dry us out. It seems so tempting to dive back into the cool darkness of apathy or cynicism. And I do, a lot of the time.
But a second chance is always hovering just overhead, there to see if only I take the chance and look.
