You Have Made Your People See Hard Things...

I would be the first to confess that I have a sensitive mind & somewhat of a photographic memory.  I would glance at the tv guide once & have the programs memorized for the week.  Even today I got a text asking for the code for the church voicemail & could still remember it from seeing it on the sticker on my desk.  Many times this was a great way to be wired (for school especially!) but it also has had its drawbacks.  I couldn't watch movies that other people did because the images (especially violent ones) would stay in my head so long afterwards.  I would be intentional about guarding my mind just so that those images wouldn't be continually in my brain.  

But I haven't been able to guard my mind as well in Swaziland, and there are many images that still come to mind, even though they happened years ago and as I continue to hear stories & get to know people, the images continue to stay on my mind & I won't soon forget - 

- seeing a ministry partner standing in the rain in the beam of my headlights, holding a child he found hiding under a bush from the rain

- seeing a one year old boy minutes after his mother died, leaving him an orphan

- seeing a woman grieve & prepare to bury her 27 year old daughter

His face will always stay in my mind as the first boy I saw orphaned
as his mother passed away at 27 years old, just after his first birthday

- seeing a 26 year old handicapped man live every day in the dirt in the shade behind his house

- seeing a 3 year old throw rocks at fully grown cows to keep them away from her as she walked home

- seeing a 9 year old caring for a 4 month old

- seeing a 2 year old walk to & from the carepoint on her own

- seeing a single mother sitting in her tiny mud hut telling me about how she stands & holds the baby in the one dry spot when it rains so that she doesn't get dripped on

- seeing people save any scrap of food & put it in a plastic bag in their purse to take home to share with family members

- seeing a grandmother in tears as she tells how she had to send her grandchildren into less than desirable homes to live because she couldn't afford to feed them & care for them

- seeing people pass a bowl of water around to drink out of

- seeing wounds on a child's feet from where mice nibbled at them while he slept

Not all of life is that difficult, but there are definitely moments in Swaziland where I swallow back the tears welling up in my eyes & almost wish I didn't have to see what I see or hear what I hear.  But I was struck today by what David wrote in Psalm 60:3:

"You have made your people see hard things" 

 David was writing this in the midst of a battle where Joab struck down 12,000 men.  I can't imagine the sight of all of that death in that valley, but it is in seeing the hardest parts of life & death that I am reminded that God's grace goes deeper than the depth of human need & suffering.  Sometimes we just see hard things in life, and it's ok not to gloss over them & try to run ahead to something more joyful.  And just as water soaks into the cracks, God's grace pours down deep into the cracks of humanity & He is sovereign over it all.  Every part of creation groans for the final day of restoration....and sometimes it's just hard to see the pain & suffering caused by sin in a world that isn't there yet.