Because We Say So!

Thursdays are Dwaleni days.

Dwaleni is a beautiful mountainous piece of South African landscape, decorated with small shacks made of remnant wood, aluminum and plastic, with a sprinkling of slightly more sturdy homes separated by bumpy dirt roads and pieces of fence here and there. Every Thursday, Ten Thousand Homes joins with a local NGO (non-profit), Sizinani Home-Based Care to feed around 300 school-aged children from the community.

Many of you have heard me talk about Dwaleni before… swarms of crazy kids mimicking the wrestling they see on TV and the violence they watch at home as they “play” together in the yard. Joy, jubilation, and the occasional “you’ve gone too far” screech of pain or scowl get tangled up in skipping ropes that slice the air but cannot penetrate the leathery, weathered feet of the school girls. Piles of boys with torn clothes just barely hanging on their bodies are covered in dirt stains and, if you can get close enough unnoticed, you can get a glimpse of the latest, greatest and usually wildly dangerous daredevil games.

Some days it feels like absolute chaos.

But every single day you can’t help but see the beauty that shines out of the eyes and even out of the battle wounds of these perfectly-created children. These intricately-woven images of Christ who didn’t get to choose their economic status, their parents or the violent messages their society surrounds them with. They don’t have a say in whether or not their house has walls or if it will stand up through a stormy night.  They don’t get to decide how much food they do or do not get to eat that day.

No child does.

I’m struck by that thought today.

After the feeding, the children were still lingering outside the yard for as much attention as they could drink up before going back to whatever their home life is like the other six days of the week. Keri had a child on each hand; Stan had become a human jungle gym; and Lennon was running up and down the dirt road chasing after the kids who couldn’t keep their hands off his new “Texas” hat from Alyssa. I walked up to an excited mob with a 10-year old angel wrapped around me, just needing to be hugged, rocked and sang to.

Another little girl, probably about 9 or 10-years old, named Simphiwe was crying while her girlfriends were taking up her offense and chasing after the bully. Like a typical scene at any elementary school recess.

The big news of the day was Simphiwe’s umbrella had been stolen.

She wasn’t crying because she had lost an accessory. Those tears weren’t accessory-sized tears.

Simphiwe’s umbrella was stolen.

And she was going home to get beaten because of it.

As though we had any doubt what the tears were from, her friends who had lost the chase and let the bully get away, came and explained through wild gestures while they exclaimed a few of the SiSwati words that I actually know. She was going to get beaten at home.

An umbrella.

A child.

She didn’t get a say in what had been given to her or taken away. Or what she was going home to.

Through choppy SiSwati I told her we would pray that she would not get beaten. Keri’s eyes welled with umbrella-sized tears.

Many of you were just waking up or still hitting snooze while Simphiwe’s umbrella drama unfolded. I was right there, almost in arm’s reach. But I could not march myself with the recess crew, still adorned in school uniform, to Simphiwe’s house and explain the umbrella crisis without putting her in more danger. Especially not with this skin and this language.

Today I watched Simphiwe not get to decide who she was going home to and what was going to happen when she got there.

Today I felt helpless and hopeless for the swarms of children buzzing around who didn’t choose this.

Today I felt more aware of the color of my skin, the safe house I grew up in, and that if I lost an umbrella – or even that time I lost my retainer – I never cried those kind of umbrella tears and I never felt that afraid.

Simphiwe and you and I… none of us have a say in the nouns or the adjectives… the types of persons, places and things we’re around as children.

But today, you and I have a say in Simphiwe’s home life and the droves of sweet little Dwaleni angels who don’t even know they are missing safety and security, hope and home.  

We have a say because we have access to the Holy Spirit who knows us, loves us and cares enough to listen. God in us Who’s willing to be influenced by His own creation, moved by His own masterpiece. (Romans 8:26-30)

And is their anything more worthy of speaking for or being moved by than Simphiwe?

So, today… Speak for the ones who don’t have a say.

And know that you’re heard.

And believe that you do have a say.

It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we knowt hta the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.

2 Corinthians 4:13-14