She sat there, watching the bustle of people fixing and building. It was all she could do…sit. So she sat and watched. She wondered if she should exert energy on thinking about something that wouldn’t change. What was the point. They obviously didn’t care. They had left her to sleep outside again. Does old age mean you become equivalent to a dog?

We had been walking around the village, helping to remove the debris from mutilated homes. The cyclone’s footprints lay scattered across the landscape of Vilanculos. The locals had been working on picking up their lives in a practical way. Then we saw her. She sat there, lost and sad. A barrier of language and despondency.

Through meagre translations we found her house – if it could be classified as such. It was pasted to the ground. We could salvage nothing. The only life that came from it were two rats and 3 scorpions. She seemed grateful but too afraid to hope. She had worked so hard on accepting her fate.

We could only come back the next day. She must have grappled the entire night – hope and fate tossing arguments back and forth in her dreams. Having stars as a blanket and sand as a bed, probably didn’t help much. We however slept cosy in our soft beds, saturated in visions of our heroic deeds…

I had to stop here while writing this, as God exposed my shallowness. I have been on the journey of ‘faith without works is dead’. And yet, here I sit, realising how works without a deep, passionate heart beating with intimate love for people, makes my efforts second rate. God’s heart.

What happened to the old woman? We went the next day to build her a new home. She was overwhelmed with excitement and thankfulness. But there is still this voice inside me that wonders what would have happened if we had stayed the night with her. Lay in her world for one night and shared in who she was.

I walk away knowing that I have so much still to learn, so much still to give, so much for God to expose, so much of God to understand. And I’m reminded that God didn’t just fix our earthly problems, but actually sent His only son to live with us in our mucky world and share in who we are.

“When He (Jesus) saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” Matthew 9:36

Filed Under: News and Stories
Associated Tags: 3D Outreach