Sabbatical blessings chapter 8: This is just not right

June 2013
 
The most significant moment of my 12-day trip to Mozambique ironically came after I left the country.

I had flown into Johannesburg to spend the night at an airport hotel. Dinner was a buffet. There was four different kinds of meat, a salad bar and dessert – a refreshing change after days of eating rice and beans at the Pemba base and on outreach in the bush. I skipped the carbo and went for vegetables and roast beef.

I like to eat. And I like variety. But that night, I couldn’t quite bring myself to try everything. As I ate, a growing sense of grief crept up on me.

All I could say, over and over again, was, “This is just not right.” I couldn’t but think of the hungry Mozambican children I had seen everyday, who lined up for their one meal of rice and beans a day at the mission base.

Why should I have access to so much food I don’t really need, while others who need it more go without? I went to bed with these questions repeating in my head.

In the morning, there was the typical breakfast buffet. I realized as I sat down to eat that again, I was saying, “This is just not right.”

I went back to take a shower after breakfast. I sat down at the toilet and started sobbing.

If you ask me why I cried, I don’t actually know. I just felt incredibly sad, and pained, at the reality of God’s children going hungry, and for a moment, I wondered how much more intense the Heavenly Father’s grief was compared to mine.

There are times when you know that you cannot go back to “normal life”, or “business as usual”. I don’t want to walk away from my Mozambican encounter the same. Once again, I feel the challenge that Jesus threw out to His disciples when they were faced with the hungry multitudes in the wilderness – “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16).

Even after having lived amongst our poorer neighbours in East Timor for 6 years, Jesus’ words continue to ring in my ears, challenging me to make a personal commitment afresh to serve the poor in love.

I pray that somehow the Father would also touch your heart to do something for the poor, compelled by love.

I have much more to share, but for now, this is perhaps the fresh word for us today.