Do you ever travel to a new country and feel as if somehow you have travelled inside a large glass box, with carefully placed posters on every wall so that you can’t see outside?
How can I see the actual “them” – the people who live in the place I am visiting as a tourist?
We travelled to a lower-income nation recently, and glass walls abounded. We were visibly the tourists. Despite long looks from a passerby – despite seeing a glimpse of a local’s hand through the glass walls laden with posters – even so, culture and financial inequalities ultimately separated our shared humanity.
It was love that broke through the impenetrable travel barriers.
Brochures distributed to tourists in this country clearly warned: “Do not leave valuables unattended.” And the pictures were those of children. A warning to keep kids close. Common sense anywhere.
So as we drove to church that Sunday, I prepped the kids ahead of time so they would stay with us in the service, regardless of whether there was a children’s program.
They nodded and looked out the glass windows of the car.
But as children often do, through a look, a smile, and then holding hands and a hug, our 8-year-old quickly made a new friend a few minutes before church started.
“Oh, Mommy, can I go too?” my daughter’s shrill voice echoed loudly down the church hall as her new friend paraded to the children’s program ten minutes later.
I smiled, nodded, and followed my daughter, changing my plans and sacrificing my attendance at church so I could sit with her in her program. Seeing the huge smile on her face, it was not much of a sacrifice. I felt the claws of my mother bear hands protruding from my paws at the thought of leaving my child with these people.
“They would have to kill me first,” was my knee-jerk reaction to my inner question of whether I would leave this child with these people.
Who were these people anyway? What did they value? I had noticed the ten-foot-high iron gate at one location. Who were they keeping out or in? What were the relative risks?
I didn’t know.
I would be content to sit and watch my child play in her Sunday school program.
But what I wasn’t prepared for, what I didn’t have any defence against, was the love of God poured into my heart. What would I do with this water, this love for the people around me, pooling at my feet? “Where do I put this water?” I called out to God.
Leave the water here and come with me, He seemed to nudge my heart.
Back to the church service?
Yes, He assured me.
And so I left.
And His peace came with me. And His peace sat with me, calmed me when I remembered the folly of my actions, leaving my child with – who are these people? Panic would rise in my chest, and God would reassure and calm me again.
For some reason, it seemed important that I trust my child to these people –
To His people.
And as I knelt to receive communion at the front, tears poured down my cheeks. Again, I was reminded that I am somehow part of a family, even of a family of people of whom I don’t even know their names. We are united in love, somehow. And I am not alone, no, never truly alone. How am I truly alone when love surrounds me?
When the service ended, I went outside, past the church, to the children’s building, collecting the piece of my heart that had been ripped away from me for a short while by our Savior Himself.
I was astonished at the responses I received.
Six or more women, strangers, saw me and then spontaneously threw their arms around me, one after another, as I walked by them.
We didn’t say a word to each other. But these women knew what I gave them. Trust. The ultimate symbol of love. And they loved me because I loved them. And I loved them because I knew that they first loved her.
And so, the walls separating our cultures were entirely demolished that day.
God, from the wounds of your cross flow the waters of your love. May the waters of love pour from our tiny sacrifices, too, as we obey You, prompting our hearts. Continue to heal our hearts with your love for us, and with our love for each other, we pray.
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
Photo credit – Divided coffee cups by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash
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