There's Another Option

On Thursday afternoon, I was so excited to return to the Dwaleni feeding program. I found the yard in disarray. The new playground was still a beacon of delight, but there was trash everywhere else. And the two giant, shade-giving, fruit-bearing trees had been cut down, damaging the feeding’s washstand on their way down.

I talked to the local volunteers, who run the feeding and dream for even more in their community, about stewarding what we have. When we do well with the little we’ve been given, we are entrusted with much. They nodded in agreement, but, as they looked at children wrestling in a trash-filled yard, it seemed like nothing registered as unusual…

Chaos is the norm.

They’ve never been outside of what they were experiencing in that yard.

How could it seem unusual? How could they want more?

......

Friday afternoon, three other TTH staff and I went to talk to a local pastor/care-giver named Jeffrey. Through Jeffrey’s limitless compassion, we are just starting to become acquainted with a family that needs to be known.

Five children, ages 5 – 14, live in a shack on the side of a mountain. They have been without parents for three years. They have had a grandmother at least checking in on them, until she died a few weeks ago. These children have no money, even though they are eligible for government grants. There’s no adult to be responsible for it. The next of kin lives just down the mountain from them… but would use the money on their own alcohol, only endangering the children more.

The kids keep going to school. They keep taking care of each other. And they eat at the feeding program Jeffrey is a part of 5 days a week. Sometimes on the weekends, they come for meals to Jeffrey’s nearby home.

As every detail of the story unfolded, we churned, we longed, and we begged for there to be at least a glimpse of glory woven into Jeffrey’s matter-of-facts.

Even he was at a standstill.

He didn’t know how to protect them. He didn’t know how they could receive money for food. He didn’t know what’s next…

On that Friday afternoon drive home from Jeffrey’s, we discussed that roadblock feeling of hopelessness. Jeffrey serves these children five days a week, and then they come over for food on the weekends. And he just can’t think of another way to help them.

We talked about asking other pastors and officials if they knew of ways to help the children get government money in a safe way. You always, always have to ask around to gather pieces of truths to get a bigger picture. It seems like no has the ability to grasp the whole truth, to understand systems clearly – even the systems don’t understand the systems completely.

Confusion prevails.

“Impossible” is the word most often used by government officials. The inability to think of tomorrow, or even the next step, is woven into the fabric of this culture.

Chaos is the cadence, and there’s just no ability to hear, see, think or know beyond it.

As we drove, I shared with the other TTH staff what had happened at the end of Thursday’s feeding program. We had made a plan to build a new, really really great washstand for Dwaleni. I was asking one of the volunteers, Joyce, where in the yard they wanted us to build it. She scanned and thought… and settled on putting it right back where it was before. Only now it would have no shade and they would be standing in mud.

I began to talk to Joyce about the dreams they have for Dwaleni and the dreams we have. I mapped out a picture of possibility, a way to bring order to the yard and make things easier on the volunteers, all by changing the location of the washstand. We were factoring dreams for the future into today’s project plans.

Suddenly, Joyce lit up. She erupted in giggles, hugged me and started clapping out thanksgivings.

Hope hit.

She just needed to know there was another option.

When chaos and confusion are all you’ve ever known…

When your enemy is gaining behind you and you’re facing a Red Sea dead-end…

When an entire kingdom is being threatened by a red-faced, larger than life villain…

When a hillside stadium is full of hungry people and you only have a couple of fish and some bread…

When there’s no way we can atone for our own sins and access God by our own means…

There is another option.

When the other option became a man and gave Himself for us…

When the heavens begin to rip, rattle and roar…

When Life kicked the tombstone of death out of the way…

We gained access to always having another option.

Hope is having another option.

Sometimes it’s as simple as moving a washstand or asking questions.

Sometimes it requires a full-fledged sea-parting, stone-slinging, food-multiplying, death-defying miracle.

And all of these things are accessible when we put our hope in the One who lived and died for it.

Some of us need to know there’s another option today.

And some of us need to help people reach for that other option.

Most of us need both everyday.