As my team and I finish our trek through thigh high weeds and tall grass we see our destination on the side of the grassy mountain: a one bedroom home made of clay and dirt clods for walls and sticks that suffice as the structure. After permission from the son, who also lives in a tiny clay home next door, we open the door and enter into the living room/kitchen/all purpose room. I look up to find an electrical line hanging 3 inches above my head. Cautiously I reach my hand up avoiding the line to find the source of the radiating heat, unsure if it was the electrical line, but settling on the tin roof as the source. After 20 steps into the door (the full length of the living room), I turn right, face to face with the entrance of the only bedroom in the house, sizing to be about 15 ft by 20 ft. As I inhale, the smell of urine and body odor fills my nose.
Pushed up against the left wall is a small, twin bed. Again I look up, but this time without any sign of electrical chords. Our ministry host asks if we can turn on our phone lights. I shine my light to the other corner. Pushed up against the right side of the wall is another bed, but this one looks to be a full. Buried between three blankets is the fragile, bony toothless grin of a 93 year old woman.
At this point my mind is racing. She looks like she hasn’t bathed in days, or even moved from bed, quite frankly. Later after our encounter, we find out that this woman used to be a larger woman, who’s skin now frames each and every bone in her body. Gogo, or Granny is what we have come to know her as.
Granny explains to us that “she’s hungry, she’s really hungry”. So my teammate, Rick, grabs two oranges from his backpack to peel and give to her. Holly finds a smashed Cliff Bar, but yet we knew that neither of these would satisfy the hunger. You see, this woman needed both physical and spiritual nourishment.
These are some of the most challenging moments for me in the World Race. It’s the moment when you feel useless. My mind always battles with the idea that even though the Lord gives us the opportunity to satisfy physical hunger, we never have control of what happens the next day when we aren’t there to take care of Granny, or the child on the street, or the orphan at the school.
In this same moment, Sara asks if we can bring lunch to Granny in the afternoon. Thank you Lord for extra time with this sweet woman.
It was in these couple of hours in between that God shed some wisdom on this situation for me.
1) Not only did our phone lights bring physical light to her room, but we brought spiritual light in a seemingly dark scenario.
2) BECAUSE I am a temple of God, I along with my team brought Jesus to her… Even though I felt completely helpless. This is the best thing we could have ever “done” for her. It’s in these moments God continues to ask me if I trust him beyond what physical control I have of situations. Because in reality, my physical control requires absolutely ZERO faith.
3) However, on the other hand, the Lord was asking that I don’t undermine the physical needs we ARE meeting. He is letting us be a part of serving His children and we being good stewards of the resources we ARE given is what He asks of us.
You see, we as Christians aren’t superheroes. Sometimes, or most of the time, we can’t cater to people’s specific needs. But that’s because if we were able to solve every problem, where is there room for God? Where is the dependency?
God doesn’t ask us to be complete problem solvers, He asks us to bring Him to every person we encounter in whatever way we can.
As Americans, I think sometimes we can be too hesitant or too skeptical when it comes to meeting people’s needs. We’ve read countless blogs and books about the repercussions of when our American hands help to the point of dependency. And yes, there’s truth to a lot of it. But I think sometimes as readers we can over think when in the situation to serve people. We let those books and blogs and stories override what our heart and our mind is telling us to do. I don’t think it’s something that we mean to do, but I think that it’s been glued in the back of our minds. When I think back to the Bible and try to get perspective on how Jesus loved and served people, there are never accounts of Him hesitating. Obviously it’s not wise to give a drunk, homeless man straight up cash to spend on whatever he likes, but I also believe that if you call upon the Lord for His discernment in situations, He is going to give it to you. Maybe serving this man well is as easy as buying him a meal, or sitting down with him in his drunkenness and just hanging out. Maybe it looks like going on a walk with him or just giving him a hug.
For Granny, it was providing some sweet potatoes, oranges, and spending some quality time basking in the sun with her sharing Jesus’ love in the ways that we had control of in the moment.
Moral of the story: Don’t over think or over complicate the love of Jesus!
