This post was triggered by my recent viewing of Invictus (which is not at all about Rugby by the way!) But it was inspired and made possible by the passionate Dr. Johan Mostert and the beautiful people of South Africa.
Some things came full circle for me today. Some that won't show up in the post, but will be seen I hope.
I'm a southern girl and proud of it. Born and raised in Columbia, Tennessee. The radio set to Nashville's 97.9 today a song about how everybody has a "hillbilly bone" made me smile and say AMEN as I drove into the country to a friend's house to be greeted by a pot bellied big, some chickens, and kiddos on the back of a gator eating watermelon slices as big as they were!
I LOVE where I come from!
In 1995, I was graduating from Columbia Central High School, beginning my first year of "freedom" which would start with that rite of passage unchaperoned trip to Panama City Beach, which is insignificant to this post, but it was one heck of a trip class of 95ers was it not? the only significance that it carries is to let you know where my mind was in 1995! :)
In 1995, a world away, Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa were experiencing a new "freedom" as well, one that my 18 year old mind bound for PCB didn't know about and quite frankly wouldn't have cared about. Apartheid "separateness" had "ended." And just like we graduates found that our "freedom" came with many new battles to be fought, Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa were "free" to begin to battle as well! As I walked through the Apartheid museum in 2007 and saw the barbed wire and armoured cars and videos playing of dates not like those in my history books of the Civil War and battles no one living had endured, but the 1980s and 1990s news clips played. This was in MY lifetime!
My "tour guide" was Dr. Johan Mostert, a professor from my graduate school, a white South African man by skin color only it seems. With passion and through tears he walked us through, recounting his memories and his love for his nation and their story which tightly interwove into his own story. Have you ever had one of those teachers who taught you things you didn't know you were learning until much later in life? A teacher, who stayed far enough away from the text book to teach you what you really needed to know to be changed, to understand, and to succeed? Dr. Mostert was THAT teacher and so much more! To say I am grateful would be an understatement.
I should probably confess now that I was so frustrated with him on this trip. It was in my head to be a "mission's trip," which to ME meant work, work, work, work, work to have the largest impact possible in a short time. Dr. Mostert was far more concerned with the impact this trip would have on our lives and our hearts than he was in what we could accomplish in 3 weeks time. And I'll have to admit, your methods although completely unorthodox:) will impact my life and your nation and mine far more than anything we could have hoped to accomplish in 3 weeks.
We went from the finest neighborhoods in Pretoria to the townships, this was not a days drive, it was a couple blocks away. I was appalled by the contrast of the make shift scrap tin homes from the bricks and landscaping I had just left. How can this be? I was shocked... as were the people in the townships, that this white woman was entering. I kept thinking, "are you kidding me? What on earth is wrong with South Africa?"
..... I love where I'm from, but I must be honest.... I see color....
I would have sworn to you that day that "apartheid" was dead and gone in MY great nation!
The contrast of the Leave it To Beaver Neighborhood next to the pieced together homes in the townships was just not right. To walk into the home of my hosts and sit down and have tea and watch South African Idol and then to travel minutes away and walk into a mud hut with no electricity, (with no NOTHING) to find a woman dying alone of AIDS in the dark no one had tended to her for days. Seriously? This is outrageous!
Several years later in my home town, I turned off West 6th Street, my grandmother lived there most of my life, when the Fuzzy Duck was a Dairy Queen ya know? Two blocks in, I visited a home where the tv was positioned on the floor, and everyone sat on the floor although there was seating and furniture to put the tv on, boards lined the windows making it so dark. A teenager entered the room and stated what's the white woman doing here? 2 blocks away....
I'm not sure what I'm getting at, we have a long way to go in the areas of equality and justice that's for sure. I'm pretty confident that our remedy is not going to come from our government. But politics and color are not what this post is about. It's about. Although I hope to spend my lifetime practicing missions, helping those who can't help themselves, going into places of great need being Jesus with skin on making sure bellies and hearts are full all around the world! I don't think that's God's calling or expectation for EVERYONE, to pack up go into the nations! He's gifted each of us uniquely and placed us strategically in our homes and jobs and churches and teams and schools and positions and has laid specific areas of need on our individual hearts! So this is not a post about foreign missions although if you'd like to donate to MY endeavors, my AGWM acct # is 294171-4! :)
So if this post is not about rugby, my senior trip, racism, politics, or foreign missions, what's it about? It is about those in need.... two blocks away.
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