Tuesday, July 19, 2016
But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it. Matthew 7:14(NLT)
Continuing with our journal from a short mission trip
to South Africa:
Zimbabwe Journal, Sunday,
October 7, 2007
“The ride into Victoria Falls was uneventful. Our Driver, Rob, is a free-lance tour guide
who is going to ferry us back & forth.
He is from England, but now makes his home in Harare.
The uneventful drive was not without impact on me. The road, paved but narrow (by U.S.
standards) was called the wide hard road. It was cut through a forest of
bare-limbed trees. There was little
underbrush and you could see clearly through to crudely constructed huts. The shanty-kind of homes widely spaced-out,
were made of small, rough-cut branches and small tree trunks.
The impact on my heart, however, was not because of
the landscape, but the many people walking along the road. In America we drive everywhere and struggle
to heave our bloated, unexercised bodies into a luxury SUV. Here they walk everywhere and carry all their
worldly goods on strong, but undernourished arms and shoulders.
As we passed many hundreds of these African people I
began to sense a foreboding of what the week will offer – heartbreak!
It was particularly difficult to see the children with
a stick and tumble-weed kind of ball as their entertainment. They had smiles on their faces; they were
laughing and running. How different from
many American youth who rarely run, and whose laughter is reserved for winning
a video game or getting an updated electronic toy.
Certainly our cultural differences are going to be a
vivid reminder to me of how materialism has distorted a sense of proportion in
me – I felt a sense of guilt and shame for how much I possess compared to these
people.
It seems theirs is such a bare life – as bare
as most of the trees – dull, dusty, and hot.
Yet the interaction of these people is vibrant and engaged with each
other.
Even now on Sunday morning as I sit outside in the
cool dampness, I hear our host, Gertie, barking out orders to the two young men
who work for her in the lodge. She barks;
they respond. And the talk is animated
and anything but dull!
And I sit here wondering why I miss watching the news
on CNN.
There are some times when a harsh dose of reality is a
good thing. It was that way for me on
this short term mission trip. I saw
their lives, uncomplicated and unprotected, fragile at the points at which I
never worry – today’s food, a repressive government that is corrupt, and
primitive conditions that made me want to help, but, in the recesses of my
mind, never out of reach the coming trip home in a few days to a life of
abundance, of which most of these people, God’s children, my brothers and
sisters in the human race, can only dream.
The difficult and narrow road isn’t an African
bush kind of road, with little luxury or meager food provisions;
rather it is a life of obedience and self-denial in the face of abundance.
For You Today
The road gets a lot easier for those with much; is
that the way God planned it?
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