beauty and pain.

It's funny that I'm only just now watching the final episodes of Oprah with my family here, even though her show was finished in the States over a month ago.  I'm not really a big fan of daytime television, but I figure, since I'm already watching soap operas, it's only right to watch Oprah as well.  I have never watched Oprah before in my life, but as I sat Sunday night watching the world celebrate her and the legacy she has created, I could not help but feel the emotional impact of countless of stories of despair transformed into stories of joy.

You might be reading my posts and thinking that the most impactful parts of my time here come from watching tv.  Thankfully, this is false.  I'm not going to lie, I do have a new-found love for South African soap operas and the Oprah Winfrey show.  But Sunday, Oprah provided for me a connection point.  This past week was filled with so many experiences, and so much emotion.  I witnessed incredible beauty, followed immediately by deep, deep pain.  The juxtaposition of the two has left me dazed, and I have struggled for several nights now to even begin to find the right words to fill a seemingly insurmountable blank page.  But then, Oprah.  Stories of pain, and stories of beauty.  Stories of despair, and stories of joy.  Most of all, stories of hope.  So I'm going to tell you a few stories from this past week.

Tuesday morning after prayer, I sat at my temporary desk, planning to finish a HNGR paper for the work day.  After five minutes, my boss came in, asking if I wanted instead to go spend the day in Khayelitsha, one of the largest impoverished communities in Cape Town.  I said absolutely yes, walked outside, hopped in a van with a few co-workers, and off we went.  We drove over to Sweet Home Farm, an informal settlement built on a garbage dump that the Warehouse works closely alongside, and picked up nine young boys to come with us and help build a house.  At this point, I realized just how unprepared I was for this spontaneous adventure.  We arrived in Khayelitsha, and I was introduced to Mama Chop Chop, the woman whose home we were working on.  I helped Mama Chop Chop make tea for the boys, and then the real work began.  As they started mixing cement, I was faced with a decision: did I stand back, watch, and maybe help make food later, or participate, guaranteeing wet feet, destroyed boots and cemented clothing?  The choice was clear.  I mixed and threw cement until my boots, pants, hands, and hair were covered with the stuff.  And then I helped make lunch.  It was a day of beauty, of laughing with boys even though I spoke English and they spoke Xhosa, of feeding hungry boys until we ran out of food, of helping provide shelter for a woman in need.  Yet in the midst of the beauty, it was impossible to ignore the painful facts: the boys were hungry, and yet we could provide only one meal; Mama Chop Chop's extension is built out of sand bags, two by fours, and cement; Khayelitsha is Cape Town's largest township, and extends for miles.  The tension between beauty and pain was vivid that day.

Though I felt joy mixed with sorrow while in Khayelitsha, I felt as though I were drowning in pain by Wednesday morning.  On the drive back to the Warehouse, we found out that a young boy had been attacked and killed in Sweet Home Farm by a pack of stray dogs.  The shock of the news left me numb; such a thing couldn't be possible.  But it was possible; the layers of poverty and the family situation led to a horrifying tragedy.  As we sat and prayed in the Warehouse on Wednesday morning, I wept tears of sorrow and anger.  How could God allow such poverty to even exist?  I felt swallowed up in despair, held under a heavy weight of hopelessness.  The pain of the story felt insurmountable.

Yet somehow, God brought hope back into a community steeped in hopelessness.  Over the weekend, thirty youth from a wealthier neighborhood's church slept in the Warehouse and partnered with some youth from Sweet Home Farm to run a kid's club in the community.  Even in the short time I spent there, I couldn't help but see love filling the playground, flying across the tiny lumpy soccer field with the kids playing, and pouring out of every child's laugh, smile, and embrace.  After such a pain-filled week, the weekend was an incredibly beautiful picture of reconciliation, joy, and hope.  Though the pain was not forgotten, the fuller picture of God's redemption was once again visible.

As I sat and watched God work this weekend, I felt my hope restored as well.  Beauty is real, just as pain is real.  I saw them both so clearly this past week.  It's easy to choose to place hope in the beauty, but beauty often is overcome by pain, and hope crumbles.  For hope to stand, it must be rooted in God, His power, and His goodness, mercy, and love.  I choose to cling to those truths, to place all my hope there.  I know joy and sorrow, beauty and pain will be the reality of these six months.  My prayer is that I would see and experience everything in the light of the hope of the Gospel, and that I would see that hope well up throughout the city of Cape Town.  That, friends, is good hope.