It’s 5:00am. The sound of my alarm goes off inside my borrowed tent and I wake up with a deflated sleeping pad. Hurt back. Sore hips. And the light of the sky greeting my waking eyes as the sun made it’s rise about 45 minutes earlier. It was just waiting for me to get up and join it in the morning light. I gather my bible, journal a few colored pens and unzip my tent. Grateful for the protection from the immense wind and rain that met it last night, and crawl out. Head a few feet across the wet grass into the pavilion and find out that like most other days, I am the first one up and awake. I heat up water to boiling and mix it with my instant 3-in-1 coffee packet I’ve put in a large empty yogurt container because it’s all that I have to drink out of. I do it so I can continue what is most like normal to me when I am at home… Jesus and coffee at 5:00am. I take my chair out to a field here on Manna Church property and stare out over the land that surrounds me. Mountains. Lush green fields. Rising sun. Dispersing clouds. And… poverty. My view is an informal settlement that has backed itself up to the church grounds within the last year. From far away, I see beauty. Colors. People. Life. The design of where each and every home has been placed. Up close, I see devastation. Need. Hurt. Disease.
Since the day we got here, my eyes have been captured by the settlement. Homes of 6×6 sq. ft. area held together by logs, tarps, and pieces of tin placed on as a roof. Huge rocks placed on the tin so that they don’t blow off the top of the house when the crazy wind makes its way here. Small gardens that every few families have to save what little money they can that they already don’t have. All I can think of sometimes is the line from the movie “Clueless” where Cher says that Amber is a Monet. From far away, she looks good but as you get up close, you realize she’s all a mess. Funny, yes. But for this informal settlement full of people just surviving here in White River, South Africa, it’s so true. One of the most beautiful sites I’ve had since coming back out to squad lead is this place. Yet it’s also one of the most devastating when I put into perspective what I’m looking at.
I take my coffee with me down to the fence line separating the two lands and pace the fence line back and forth. The fence that divides the church and the settlement. All I can do walk along it because it’s electric current and barbed wire tells me to stop where I’m at and go no further. Why is it there? Sometimes I get so upset that it’s there. Keeping them out. Keeping them in. Like animals in a zoo. We can see them, watch how they live, but not be with them. My missional heart that desires more for them in life and with Christ hates the separation. Violence and pain separates them from us. The have’s and the have not’s. I cry and express frustration to God. Until He reminds me of His purpose and perspective.
The fence is there to keep them out. And to keep me safe. From the unknown. From dangers and temptations that may lie on the other side. It’s there for my protection. The fence is up to draw the line between where I know it’s safe to go and where I don’t. It’s meant to keep them out.
But it’s not meant to keep me in. Not meant to keep me from going there. It makes it harder, but not impossible. They can’t come here on this side of the fence. But I can go there to their side. I can’t go there at this moment because I have to eat breakfast and get my work clothes on so I can spend the next handful of hours weeding a ridiculously overgrown onion patch with about 15 other girls from the squad. So I walk alongside the fence line and pray for them.
Fast forward about 12-13 hours and imagine the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen. After a day of ministry here at the church that’s blessed us to tent and stay here for free as long as we need, we are tired. Most of us have been out weeding somewhere on the grounds, getting sun burnt, and are physically exhausted from the day. But as the sun descends behind the mountains on the other side of the settlement, we all crowd together to watch the colors of the sky change with every move of the rotation of the earth. The lightening starts up in the cloudy sky and the thunder starts to roar as the rain rolls in. We all watch the sunset. The lightning, The colors. Many of us try to capture the scene we’re staring at on camera… but know we can’t. We love the beauty of what God is doing as a master artist in the sky, but can miss the beauty that He wants to do in the lives of the people whose homes we are overlooking to see the sky. He wants us to look at the sky and appreciate it and give Him glory, but doesn’t want us to overlook the people made in His image for it. I look again at the fence. I’m reminded of my walk along it that morning. And the mornings before. And I hear God remind me that it’s there to keep them out. But not meant to keep me in. They can’t come to my side of the fence. But I can go to theirs.
So why haven’t I?
