It all began in a question I asked my team leader, Don the other day. Looking at the van window we were riding in, I saw a half-ripped-off sticker that had been on the window for a long time. Dirt was stuck to the residue, the sticker was all wrinkled and the content of what used to be there was completely unrecognizable. Just the way it had been ripped, wrinkled, dirt had been stuck to it, made it look beautiful to me. I actually framed it with my hands as if I was seeing what it would look like if it was cropped into a square, painted on a canvass. I looked at Don and asked, “Am I crazy for thinking this is beautiful?”
He replied “Not at all.” He proceeded to tell me a story about a car wreck where the windshield shattered, and how the way the glass broke looked beautiful. It made me think about how beautiful all of Africa is, with all of the dirt, chipped paint and rust. You can’t exist in this place without ending your day with dirty feet.
This is all very different than the way we exist in America. We want everything to stay perfectly clean, freshly painted and well-groomed, but I look at this place and I am in awe of all of the beauty I see just in it’s natural broken-down state. Maybe it’s just who I am as an artist but I love that these people are okay with things being dirty, chipped and broken-down. Even the people have calloused feet, dirty clothing and even broken hearts. We are in an area of Uganda that has been plagued by a 21 year war. EVERYONE who lives here has been affected by it. Their experience, as aweful as it has been, has given them a character that is vastly different from those who’ve never seen such atrocities. I’m not saying this war was a good thing, but it creates in their being, a type of character that can be, and hopefully has been, redeemed by God. I believe the most beautiful people are those who allow their broken state to be redeemed by God.
In America, it’s difficult for us to even allow ourselves to get to the broken state because of all of our sanitizers, pristine paint-jobs and general belief that we have enough money, knowledge and resources to take care of it on our own, without asking God to help us. If we can allow ourselves to be ‘broken’, God can redeem us and make us who HE wants us to be. This is the most beautiful version we could be, broken people redeemed by God.
