Whenever people find out I’ve been
to Swaziland, Africa, people are very excited to talk to me about it. Their
eyes light up and they ask animatedly,
“So, what was the highlight of your
trip?”
It seems like a simple enough
question, but I feel like my answer always comes as a disappointment. People
want to hear that I taught a child to read or built a house for someone or
helped give birth to baby in some remote village. Instead I have to let them
down by telling them this:
“The highlight of my trip was sitting
in the dirt and counting pebbles with a very sweet little girl.”
There’s always a pause, as if I am
speaking foreign language that nobody can understand. I get a quizzical look,
where people wait for me to laugh and scream, “Just kidding! The highlight of
my trip was helping a mother birth twins on the mud floor of a hut!” But when
the laugh doesn’t come, and they realize I am serious, their faces fall, their
eyes break away from mine, and they look away. I can almost hear the scornful
thoughts radiating out of people’s minds.
“You mean, you raised over $3000 to
go sit with a kid and count rocks? What a waste of money.”
And it’s funny, because if my trip to
Swaziland had absolutely anything to do with me desiring to achieve something
physical, tangible, or objectively measurable with the money that allowed me to
take this journey, I could almost agree. If I thought that the $3000 that was
miraculously blessed to me was meant for me to go magically end poverty and
transform an entire country in one go, then I might share this same point of
view. If counting rocks with a 5 year
old in the dirt was the highlight of my time in Swaziland, it means I probably
had a pretty epic failure of a trip to the other side of the world.
But, I firmly believe, with all of
my heart, that my trip was not a failure at all. In fact, I pray I will be able
to do it again in the future. That’s right. I would spend $3000 again to sit
with a child in the dirt counting rocks. You see, the purpose of my trip was
never to end poverty. The purpose of my trip was simply to show my brothers and
sisters in Swaziland love.
In the Western world, we have
become obsessed with a demon called convenience. We like things to be simple
and we like them to happen right away. We want entertainment? We turn on the
TV. We’re hungry? We open the fridge. We need to shoes? We get ready to go the
store, then decide it would be easier to shop online so that we can keep eating
our snack and watching our show on TV. And while this alone isn’t necessarily
bad, we have started looking even for the most convenient ways to serve others.
It’s pretty easy to help others by dropping
a few coins into the bucket that stands next to the Salvation Army people
ringing their bells in front of the grocery store. What are a few extra coins?
We’re spending money on groceries anyway. It’s also pretty simple to cut box
tops off of cereal containers and feel good about doing something for American
education, or save all of your Yoplait yogurt lids and feel good about helping
people with cancer. And it’s certainly very fast and efficient to click the
“donate” button on the top of a charity’s page and feel good about changing the
world.
Please
don’t get me wrong. Those things are
good. Donating money is good. Money is important. In fact, there’s no tool more
powerful than money when it comes to changing the world except your hands, your
time, your devotion, and your love.
And the
funny thing about things that demand our hands, our time, our devotion, and our
love is that they are almost never convenient. They are almost never quick.
They are almost never easy. They are almost never simple. But they are always,
always, worth it.
I firmly
believe that if every person on this earth who had his or her own basic needs already
met, turned to a neighbor in need and devoted themselves to spending time with
this person, listening to this person, sharing love and encouragement with this
person, there would be no such thing as poverty.
There are
so many things that people in poverty
need. And I do not wish to diminish the urgency with which we should act on
these needs. Yes, there are educational needs for people living in poverty,
health care needs for people living in poverty, emotional needs for people
living in poverty and if these needs are to be fulfilled, money is most
certainly required. By all means, give your money to good causes.
But when I
look at the world, I truly don’t see a planet that is suffering from a lack of
money. People have so much money, too much money, and they are willing to give
it if you can make a convincing enough plea. No, we are not suffering from a
lack of money, but rather, a lack of personal investment. It is truly very easy
to convince people to give their money to a good cause, but very difficult to
convince them to give themselves.
While these
children in Swaziland are very appreciative of the material needs we help meet
for them with our money, I am convinced they ultimately care very little about
the things we give them.
However, I
know the children do care about other things. They care about being seen. They
care about being heard. They care about being loved, they care about feeling
worthy and they care about the time devoted to them because they know that the
time a caring person gives to them is a resource more precious than anything
money could ever buy.
So let us not be afraid to be inconvenienced. Let us not be
afraid to use the gifts of our hands and our hearts to do the work that needs
to be done in the world. Let us not be afraid to give our time to just sit and
be there with someone who needs us.
I am positive that our hands were made to do more than simply
cut off box tops for education, or yogurt lids for cancer. Our hands were made
to do more than mindlessly sign checks that benefit people we choose not to
interact with personally. Our hands were made to do more than move a mouse to click the bright yellow “donate”
button at the top of a computer screen.
Our hands were made to reach out to our neighbors. Our hands
were made to hold a child’s. Our hands were made to pull rocks out of the
dirt and willingly count them over and over and over again, not because it is a
convenient or quick process, but because that is what is needed of us, and
because that is what it means to love.
Let us not be afraid to give this kind of love, the kind of
love that others view as a waste of time or money or talents. Let us not be
afraid to travel as far away as the other side of the world or as close as our
neighbor’s front door for this very simple purpose. Let us not be afraid to sit
in the dirt and count pebbles with a child who needs our love.