Fixing our eyes on and holding onto the good

 Life. A cocktail. Mixture.

Sometimes a sweet blend.

At times, most times? Some strange concoction.

Other times a seemingly almost too disgusting mishmash.

It’s a basket of laughter and tears, joy and pain, excitement and utter boredom, love and hate, good and evil.

Last week was one of those times of living in the extremes of opposite emotions. Exceeding joy that is almost unbelievable was sharing space in the same heart that was trying to shock absorb the pain cutting through it.

This year, apart from literally watching a fairy tale unfold before my eyes (oh! I wish I could tell the full story naye…hmmm), there is something else that has brought me so much gladness.

Whenever I see Rob and Al (not real names), I almost have to pinch myself. Are they really here? Are they going to stay? Are they just passing through briefly? Then quickly I remind myself to have a little more faith.

Rob and Al have been part of the group of men and women we have been reaching out to for a little over two years now. We meet them at their kafunda, weekly. Yes, while they suck at their tot packs and puff from rolled up leaves and all, we sing praises and share the Word with them. We’ve also cried with them in their times of mourning and visited them when they or their family members are ill. Thinking about it, they’ve become some sort of family.

As weeks became months and months became years, moments came when I for one would sit back and ask myself whether this was practical, whether there was any progress, whether these people would come to see what we hoped they would see.

Every week we found them in the same place, circumstances still looking the same however, God was secretly doing and is still doing a work in their hearts. Rob and then last week Al; out of their own will, pushed by no one, came personally to enroll for a rehabilitation program. I can’t describe how that makes me feel. The joy.

“Have any of you been sexually involved?” my colleague, Cathy asked. Slowly, several hands went up. For some, heads were bowed. The shame. Maybe even guilt. I don’t know. I went numb-ish. The question had been prompted by the study she was taking them through (as we often do when we meet them weekly) about Isaac and Rebecca – Rebecca’s purity came up.  We wrapped up and sent the boys off. We stayed with these girls. You see, over 90% of these children are daughters to sex workers. And the 10% or less is no different really because they live in this same community. We are talking about children between the ages of 5-12! Being used by fellow girls, boys, adults, watching material they shouldn’t, bumping into adults at it in the corridors, some actually in the house when their mothers are at it too. It was quite abhorring to listen to and yet we had to be composed enough to listen with compassion and empathy, hold these little ones and reassure them, for some their faces drenched in tears. We cried too. Lingering in my mind; ten? EIGht? SIX? Years old. The pain.

I tried to hang on to the celebration of the good things but often found myself “meditating” on the bad one yet that is always a dead end. There is nothing at the end of a negative thought.

It’s a sad situation but focusing on its negativity is not a healthy thing… because what I focus on expands. What’s done is done. However, what’s the good in this? There is always light at the end of a positive thought.

I choose to celebrate that these children can confide in us. I choose to celebrate that they can take good counsel from us. I choose to celebrate the possibilities of forging a way out/solution/alternative for them. I choose to celebrate the same God that brought Rob and Al to the center even when I thought nothing was happening. That same God, I choose to believe, is doing something in this community. I have seen, over the last three years, women walk out of the sex business and look for alternative sources of income. Most seem not to be shifting but I am certain God is working behind the scenes.

This week and always, keep your mind on the one who has got the whole world in His hands. The storms and “how in the world?” things of this life come to turn our gaze off the one who calms storms. When we lose our focus on Him, we put our energies into the wrong things then they expand and seem bigger than the reality of our loving God. We begin to sink. We lose perspective. We start to take notice of the waves and wind.

Rehearse the goodness of God, the things He has seen you through, the things He is pulling you through and the things that are not adding up will cower at all the things that have worked out all this while to this moment as you read this. Even when you don’t see it with your physical eyes, or feel it with your hands, or hear it with your ears…keep faith alive, keep hope alive coz He is in the business of working behind the scenes.

I like the way Amplified version puts Isaiah 26:3; “You will keep in [a]perfect and constant peace the one whose mind is steadfast [that is, committed and focused on You—in both [b]inclination and character],”

NLT says “…all whose thoughts are fixed on you.”

Keep your eyes and focus fixed on Christ, on God because with Him all things are possible, and He is our peace in the storm.

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full, in his wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace” - Hillsong