Making space.: The Writing on the Wall

I can’t speak beyond the dirt roads of the two communities I spend my days in, but I’ve noticed that there is a tremendous deficit for relationship language here. Long ago, in the more traditionally tribal days, marriages were arranged, labola (dowry) was negotiated, and that was that. No need for words that involve butterfly bellies, secret crushes, romantic feelings, or even the words that define degrees of relationship.

Today, the Western world has touched down in South Africa. But in these starving communities that lack running water but not a TV, the Western culture is only screen-deep.

I often walk into feeble homes full of sick and hungry bodies, only to find a TV blasting the corrosive messages of the handful of American programs that come on basic channels: The Tyra Show, Judge Joe Brown and the Bold and the Beautiful.

That’s where this culture is learning how relationships work!

There’s no middle-ground between the words “love” and “hate”, betrayal and abuse is the norm, and the dangers are soaring. Yet there’s still the cultural history of not talking about relationships with your family, and an expectation for the labola to be paid for the relationship to be acknowledged.

“I love you,” can mean anything from, “Nice to meet you,” to “I think you’re pretty,” to “Let’s have sex.”

And, therefore, it means nothing at all.

Yet, meaning or no meaning, people are still speaking.

Words are still flying – building up or breaking down.

They write a banner over our lives and draw the boundaries of our realities.

We live inside the walls of our words and what we believe about them.

Nandi is called Runaway. So she runs.

In the book of Hosea, Gomer is called adulterous. So she defies the price of a covenant and sells her body.

BUT, sometime between Gomer’s life and Nandi’s, the Word became flesh.

The real Word.

The Way. The Truth. The Life.

That Word.

Jesus broke through the walls of His heavenly home, walls written by holiness and perfection. And He broke through the veil that separated His house from ours, bringing our misprinted, broken banners down with it.

He rose from the grave to raise a banner of Truth over us.

A banner that restores the meaning of the word LOVE.

When I visited my family in America, my sister presented me with a beautiful piece of art. She painted the word LOVE on a canvas, and filled it with True Love. What the Word says about Love. She handed it to me and said, “This is for Mama Nandi.” (In South Africa, you call a mother by her oldest child’s name. Nandi’s mother is called Mama Nandi.)

I was blown away.

My sister has never been to Africa, never met Mama Nandi.

But my sister has access to the Word and to Love. And she knew that Mama Nandi’s body, mind and spirit has been broken, beaten and sold into a counterfeit love.

Today I got to go present True Love to Mama Nandi.

Even as her womb swells with a product of counterfeit love, we went into her home and declared veil-tearing, life-giving, true Love over the walls in that home.

She held in the tears. She couldn’t hold in the smile.

A new banner hangs over Mama Nandi’s home.

A veil tore so she wouldn’t be called the adulterer anymore.

“In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master’. I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked… I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.” Hosea 2:16,19

The Word became flesh so you could bear that Love in every part of you.

So you could come Home with Him, and so that He could make His Home in you.

Wave a banner of hope and a banner of love wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are. You can’t earn in it, but it’s meant to be lavished on you. To clothe you in splendor.

“Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, ‘Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.” Hosea 14:2