Every story has different perspectives. In general there is a usually a hero/villain and a problem/solution. A story usually causes you to side with one character of a story and feel for him or her when people act out against them.
Well today I experienced a snippet of a story and it was the first time my perspective was shattered. Three days ago I went to a village in Lesotho like we did a dozen other times to build relationships with the people of the village. This village consists of 50 people including children, but today my team saw something we had never experienced before.
The past few days spring warmed up the valley which meant beautiful flowers were in bloom and coats were taken off. What this meant specifically was that we saw a child we have seen multiple times in the village in a new light. She regularly had one of the saddest expressions on her face but today we noticed her body that was in desperate need of food. As she stood there her arms were sticks and her belly had a growth that looked liked the size of two golf balls in place of a belly button. As we talked with a woman in the village we were with, she shares that her mom died a few years ago and this four year old was living with her grandmother and ten other children but she refuses to feed this one child. As we stood with them, we saw that this girl had burn marks on her arm. She was then called home, houses away by her grandmother.
My team felt led to go to the grandmothers house. As we went I prayed with one of the teammates both for the grandmother and the child. As much as I hated what the grandmother was doing we asked how we could serve her when we arrived at her house. The grandmother then gave us the chore of moving dried cow dung. As my team lifted block after block of cow dung the grandmother and her neighbors started laughing at us. Today was the first day it clicked that mockery is not going to stop me from sharing this woman light. She mocks because she sees us as different. She sees we are different causing her to think about why. By serving the people on this earth that are hardest to love the Lord is pulling us closer to understand how He felt on this Earth when He was crucified.
In the long run, whether it is the girl or grandmother, as hard as it is to comprehend, both need to be shown love. Serving should not be defined by who we think deserves the love of Jesus because if we look at it from thst perspective, we would all be in debt to Jesus’ love. Let our hearts fall deeper in love with Jesus so that we can love people worse off from me: the orphan. But let our hearts deepen into a Christ kind of love; love for the enemy, the hardest kind of love: love for the grandmother. Let’s shatter who we think is the villan and innocent in stories because in long run there is only one possible redeemer and a broken world. The “good” and “bad” is now the broken and the redeemer. So let’s fight the darkness of the world by spreading light to the most broken parts of the world even if it gets our hands dirty with cow dung and egos shot down with being mocked. Because guess what? Lightness beats darkness every time.
Prayer request: Tomorrow I’m preaching my first sermon ever and the little girl named Tibulla and her grandmother will be at this service. Please be praying that there hearts be open to what Godly love truly is whether it is the grandmother giving pain or the little girl in pain. Both of them need Gods love. Specifically I’ll be preaching about 1 Corinthians 13:4-8,13. Thank you!
The light shines in darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:4-5
