Micah Morphosis

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The Face

November 14, 2006

I’ve been asking myself the question, “what can I do”. There’s a pandemic, I’m painfully aware, and I feel hopeless to do anything to change that. After all, it’s happening way over there and I’m way over here. The only things that are there to even remind me is the photographs that pass through my head and the white band on my wrist.
I need to give Africa a face. A face that’s three dimensional, flesh and blood. I need to remember that real people are dying and not just another photo that lacks a soul.
I see this beginning to take shape in my life. A woman who has been living in West Africa for many years came to our small church congregation to tell us stories of hope and perseverance in the face of poverty and death. A woman, an AIDS worker, from Swaziland also came to speak to us about HIV/AIDS in her country. She told us the first people to help them out were a local Mennonite church. I met a man from Sudan who cooks me traditional African food and tells me stories of growing up in an African village. All the joy and pain, music, poverty and richness of life in a culture and society so completely different from the one I’m surrounded (bombarded) by.
All of the sudden this face is beginning to take shape in my mind’s eye. One with deep, longing eyes, round cheeks and a smile on its face. The language that comes forth from it’s mouth is teaching me how I can help. It’s telling me I can do something. It’s pushing me forward into an unknown world of dirt roads, mud huts, crowded market places, beautiful people and needy hands reaching out for a touch of Love. But this voice also tells me to look around. It says to me, “Open your heart where you are right now. Don’t wait until you’re with me. I tell you the truth, anything you do for even the least of my people where you are, you also do for me.”

Posted by Marygrace on November 14, 2006 01:32 PM