I may never know exactly what those words mean, to sacrifice it all, but I can tell you first hand a story of a woman who did.
“It is really dusty today,” I think to my self as we walk down the dirt roads of SOS Compound, just on the other side of the road from Chunga. My team and I live at Hilltop bus top, on the boarder of Chunga and Matero city districts which are apart of outer Lusaka. It is our third day doing door to door ministry in SOS and we are walking around praying for people. The streets here in SOS are sandy red dirt roads, smattered with trash. The street kids who do not go to school run around barefoot in tattered clothes yelling out “Muzungu!” as we walk by. Their white teeth show through in big smiles as we wave back to them. We pass house after house as we wind down different streets that run between concrete block houses. The sky is bight blue and puffy white clouds float along. The weather is a bit cold even though the sunshine hits our faces, it is winter in Zambia. Brightly colored shirts and other assortments of clothing hang on lines stretched from house to house swaying back and forth in the breeze. Some houses we stop at or give a quick greeting to those who sit outside, other houses with closed doors we pass by.
One house we came to and there was a lady outside. We came up to her asking if we could speak with her. She hugged each of us and invited us into her small house. There were a few children playing in the yard all curious about these white people. As we made our way into the house they followed us squeezing into the small front room where we all found places to sit on the floor. The little boys ran in and out through the door the whole time we were there. The room was dark, just the sunlight streaming through the open door lit the room us. The floors were concrete stained red, an old glass cabinet with nothing in it sat in the corner behind where I was sitting and a small bench like table ran along the adjacent wall.
Our team, our translator, this gracious lady, and her 2 year old daughter all sat on the floor and we began to share. We asked her about her struggles and what she needed prayer for. She seemed a bit timid at first, but then told us about the difficult situation she was going through. She told us about her husband and the abuse she and her children suffered. How her husband had an anger issue and would come home drunk. She recalled a time when he was so angry he broke things in the house and burned all the furniture in the house and all of the kids clothing. She was thin, her children were dirty and the clothes they wore were tattered. The little girl beside me was sick as her nose kept running onto her little dress and flies covered her face as she stood beside me. They were all living in poverty, absolutely destitute. We shared with her the story of Joseph, encouraging her that even when our situation seems hopeless, to call on God our comforter. My heart broke for her as we sat there on the floor.
For 20 minutes or so we encouraged her and then all stood to pray before we left. After we prayed for her, she told us to hold on she had something for us. From the other room she walked in with a plate of cow liver. She held it out and told us that she wanted to bless us with it since we had taken the time to come to her home and bless her. From the state of the house and what we had just heard from her, we all stood there knowing that this meat, this cow liver that she was offering us was probably the only meal they had for that day or even the next. She knelt down on the ground holding the plate up in the air as an offering. She wasn't offering it from her knees to us, but to her heavenly Father. She told us we were angles sent by God for this moment, to come in and bless her. In that one moment, I came to realize what it truly means to sacrifice all that you have. It was simple, but for me it was the most humbling experience. To be in the home of someone well below the poverty line and then to be offered their meals.
Everything inside of me wanted to cry out, “NO! NO, you keep it. You feed yourself and your children!”, as she placed all 7 pieces of the meat into a bag. All that was left on the plate were tiny crumbs, and as one fell off onto the ground, her little baby daughter toddled over and picked it off the dirty floor, and placed it in her mouth. My heart sank at the thought of this family having nothing, but still giving all that they have in the midst of hardship.
Her sacrifice was great, and it moved me to tears as the other children ran in from outside and picked the crumbs off the plate. Those kids may not have anything to eat for the rest of the day because their mom sacrificed everything, but the beauty of it all was that she didn't sacrifice it to us, she sacrificed it to her savior, Jesus.
