(From Beth)

I’ve been wanting to write for a while on this topic.  Since our visit to Africa,  I’ve been mulling it over and over in my mind.  God is definately working in my heart, and I find it quite amazing.

I had been to Togo before our visit this fall.  I went as a missions intern when I was a college student in 1994.  And on our recent trip, things in Africa were much as I remembered them.  But one thing that really got to me this time that I didn’t really remember being as bothered by when I was an intern was the dirtiness.  It was everywhere, and inescapable.

In Kara, there is no city sanitation system.  The missionaries we stayed with paid for some sort of service, which involved two guys coming by the house with a large wheelbarrow, into which went all the trash, and they took it away to God only knows where.  But most people cannot afford such a service, so they just dump their trash wherever they can.  On the side of the road.  Into the stream.  There are piles of trash and refuse just about everywhere you look in the city.  You can smell it, too, especially with the heat.   The smells of the trash mix with the smell of the animals (a myriad of chickens and donkeys and goats  roam all over the city) and the smell of hot, sweaty people who aren’t able to use deodorant.  And the little black plastic bags lying and drifting everywhere are a real eyesore!  In Kara, all purchases are wrapped up in these little black plastic sacks (like the bags you might get here from Wal-mart or Target or any grocery store, only smaller and black).   Unfortunately plastic does not degrade, although it can get torn, so there are black plastic bags and pieces of black plastic bags everywhere you turn.  And I haven’t even begun to talk about the mud puddles.  We were in Togo during the end of the rainy season.  The  daily rainstorms leave huge puddles that seem to radiate dirty humidity once the sun comes back out.  The mud, and later in the year, the dust, leave permanant stains on the concrete buildings in the city.   Even inside the missionaries’ homes, there is no real getting away from the dirtiness.  The mud follows you inside and soils the tile floors; the dust and the smells drift in through the slatted windows that can’t be shut completely.  After being in Kara for just a week, my eyes literally felt tired of seeing all the dirt and mud and trash.  I wanted to shut them and cover them up so I didn’t have to see any more.  Truly, it was as though the ugly dirtiness actually hurt my eyes.  By the end of our short stay, I was longing to feast my eyes on the pristine cleanliness here in the States:  the sharply cut lawns trimmed with bushes or flowers, the clean smooth streets, the unstained houses and businesses with clear glass windows, the air untainted by animal smells and rotting trash(and often supplemented by candles or perfumes).

I felt somewhat ashamed of this struggle;  after all, I should be able to see past the dirt, especially in Africa, where there are so many needs.  My heart should be able to get beyond such a surface issue.  But there all that dirt was, and I was truly having trouble dealing with it.  Maybe it bothered me more on this trip than when I had been to Togo before because my children were with me this time.  We like to keep our kids clean and germ-free, right?  Whatever it was, I was having a tough time keeping my eyes open!

I talked with my dear friend Nicole about this.  She is one of the missionaries in Kara, and my family stayed with hers while we were there.  How can you live amongst all this ugliness?  I asked her.  How can you keep looking at it day after day?

And Nicole challenged me to find the beauty.  It is always there, she said.  In every place, in every circumstance.  But we have to have our eyes open to see it.  And we have to have our hearts open to receive it.  God will show it to us, if we are willing to keep our eyes and our hearts open.

I pondered that for the remainder of our stay in Togo.   I began to pray  for open eyes and an open heart.  And God started to answer that prayer.

I saw a woman wearing brightly colored garments, balancing a brightly painted enamel bowl on her head, her sweet toddler tied to her back.  I thought about the hardship of carrying both a full bowl and a growing child,  often in the pouring rain, and I marveled when the woman smiled at me.

I saw a child, dressed in dirty brown rags, who peeked shyly at me, and grinned when I waved.

I listened to the story of a woman who had searched for God all her life.  Her childhood had been filled with extreme poverty and loss, yet there was no bitterness in the story she told me, only praise for a God who loved her and had found her.

I traveled to a retreat center built up in the mountains, where bright orange flowers grew everywhere among the quiet, peaceful stillness overlooking the city.

I worshipped God with people who spoke a different language but sang the from the same Spirit that I do.

And here, back in the good old US of A, I continue to learn to have my eyes and my heart open.  Just recently I visited a nursing home where my father is a short-term resident.  It was a difficult thing to do, given all my history with my dad, which I won’t go into, except to say that my dad’s choices continue to put him in very sad places.  Just seeing my dad there was heart-breaking.  It’s a typical nursing home, smelling like urine and inhabited by people the world has forgotten.  But even there, I found beauty:

In the upbeat personality of a woman named Karen, who liked listening to gospel music.  She couldn’t get all of her words out well, but she remembered my name and my sister’s name when we came back the next day.

In the innocent sweetness of another lady named Joyce, who has Alzheimer’s.  She spoke to my sister and I at length–and we could make little sense of any of it–but all the while, she smiled and giggled.  Becky said to her at one point, “You are always smiling, aren’t you?”  And in a moment of complete clarity Joyce responded, with all seriousness, “Well, you’ve got to, don’t you?”

In the clear blue eyes of a man named Stanly, who wheeled himself up and down the hallways, over and over again.  My dad dismissed any idea of speaking to Stanly, saying “He can’t talk back to you.”  But Becky and I talked to him anyway, and once, his somber face cracked the smallest of smiles, and another time, he waved back at me when I waved to him.

In the faith of a Baptist preacher who comes to the nursing home every Sunday to conduct a worship service for anyone who wants to atttend.  My sister and I didn’t get to meet him, but Dad said that he usually goes to the service, and I am grateful for what this man of God is providing.  He hasn’t forgotten the people there, like the rest of the world has.

I find these discoveries very exciting.  No matter where I may find myself, no matter what the circumstance, there will be beauty to behold.  God will show me where to find it.  I will never be in a place where His light cannot reveal something lovely, something of light, something He has touched.  So it is that He can change what seems to be dirty, destitute, left-over and forgotten by the world, into a thing of wonder and joy.  That is one of the mysteries of the gospel.  And it is truly beautiful.  My eyes and my heart are open.

Image by Roby© via Flickr