I Hangout With Naked People
My ministry in Swaziland is children’s ministry. Thursday a little boy came wearing no pants, or underwear, from the hips down he was naked. And it struck me, the people hear have nothing to hide behind. Their poverty, sickness, and brokenness are exposed and in the light they are naked compared to what I am used to.
In the States, resources are plentiful, social welfare is available, and so we can hide. We use our right to privacy to keep our brokenness and neediness a secret. We fear someone may know we lost our job, missed a loan payment, or that we are in fact living paycheck to paycheck. So, put armor on to protect ourselves. We fill our lives with busyness so we don’t have to think about how far from God we are. We fill silence with noise because otherwise we know the truth that will be spoken. And we cover the tracks of our inadequacy with performance because we know we won’t measure up. We are defensive because we need to protect ourselves from the opinion of others.
Here, the kids wear their brokenness on their sleeve. They can not hide the cough they’ve had for two weeks, or the long-term effects of their hunger, or their chronic tiredness. Their needs are raw and exposed to the world. The Swazi kids are vulnerable to attack. From the high rates of HIV, to the proximity to the border making human trafficking a very real threat, to the rampant hunger these kids are facing up Mount Everest type battles. They have no cushion to protect them or armor to cover them.
Their exposedness and nakedness is jarring at first. It is startling to see actual nakedness, but I am getting used to it. I am getting used to less aggressive, less protected, less armored living. It is showing me just how self protective I am just out of the need to not feel vulnerable to attack. When we take off the armor we can feel more deeply and love more fully.
So, American friends I am challenging you to take a page from the Swazi book. Live life a little more vulnerable. Live life as you without apology and without self protection.
The people I hangout with are naked, and they are teaching me a lot.
with love,
Soph
