Hope

...And now, some light reading from Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy:

The ceiling of our shack began to crumble, and the door and wooden window frames began to rot, and in the winter icy winds would whip through. We were reliving the nightmare of Fifteenth Avenue. The slushed walls gradually peeled, inviting bats, rats and other nightly creatures to come live with us.

One day I asked my mother, "Why don't Papa fix the house?"

"It's not his house."

"Whose house is it?" I asked. "We live in it don't we?" Though I knew that we did not own the house, I thought that the least my father could do was to fix it; after all, we lived in it.

"Living in it doesn't make it our house."

"Whose house is it then?"

"It's the landlord's house."

"Why don't he fix it?"

"He doesn't want to."

"We pay him rent, don't we? He should fix it. If it falls, he won't be able to get rent no more."

"Yes, but he won't fix it."

"Why not?"

"HE WON'T FIX IT! NOW HUSH!"

I hushed, and the house continued decaying. Often during the night, particularly after it had rained and the floor was soggy wet, my brother, sisters and I, after being gnawed by vicious red ants and scorpions burrowing through the porous cement floor, would wake up screaming from the floor where we slept. Rats never stopped eating our palms and feet, and we often were unable to walk or handle anything for days because both areas were like open wounds. Bedbugs and lice sucked us dry during the night. And just about every day my mother had to get new cardboard to make pallets because the rats were eating those too.

What strikes me most about this novel is that the author doesn't seem to be as bothered by his standard of living as I am. I cringe at the thought of rats eating people in their sleep, but Mathabane capitalizes his mother's words, "NOW HUSH." He is most troubled by the overwhelming absence of hope.

That's why holistic ministry makes sense to me. People in Philippi (the township where Bridges started) have to continuously battle to protect the hope in their lives from a society that has a long history of taking it away. If a ministry can catalyst them into tangibly regaining hope, then the gospel will be nearby. 

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

-King Solomon

Pray for:

-Hope to penetrate South Africa, tangibly and spiritually.

-My continued hope in the Lord. Psalm 146:5-6. God is so good!