"What hope do they have!"
Thank you for your prayers, comments and encouragement from the story I wrote about crying on my closet floor. Since then, we’ve celebrated 3 years of beautiful marriage, hosted a wonderful bunch of people for my 34th birthday, and Lifa got his first bloody nose at a rugby practice. He felt like he had finally become a man.
We also attended a challenging and inspiring conference focused on building South Africa to become its best. During the conference, one speaker shared that there are more youth in South Africa than in all of the other African countries combined. The room gasped, and my stomach fell to my knees. I am embarrassed to say that my very first thought was, “What hope do they have?”
An argumentative “Do you know what I’ve seen!?!” movie flashed on the screen of my mind, and I couldn’t get it to stop. The gangs, the crime, the strikes, the corruption, the declining education system, the university students burning their future down… I could go on and on. But it’s not the same movie God watches, and so it’s just not worth our time. I immediately felt convicted.
What hope do they have? I look at my son and think of the odds stacked against him. I think about the boy with the eyebrows and wonder about his future. But in that moment of conviction, I realized I was had gotten my punctuation and enunciation way out of whack. (You can ask Chris Ladd how important grammar is in my world.)
God did not intend for me to look at the place where He’d given me a family and a calling and say, “What hope do they have?” The rest of the world is doing that. He called me to see them with the eyes of the God who created every single one of them, unsurprised by their numbers or statistics, and speak over them, “What hope do they have!”
That day on my closet floor knocked me to my knees, but when I got up and carried on, my hope did not. I didn’t even realize it, but my eyes and mind stayed on ground level.
My mom was a reading teacher, and her famous words still echo through my mind – and come out of my own mouth! “Read it like you mean it!” Enunciation, expression, and proper grammar interpretation make it or break it, ever since I was four years old and reading about Mr. Frog and Toad.
Lifa is captivated by storytelling after hours of reading Chronicles of Narnia aloud together. Literature came alive to him, and he practices reading like he means it to me. You should hear him on his class oral presentations – total boss. I just realized that what I’m really teaching him is how to read, enunciate, and speak out what’s right in front of him - in books, life, and in faith.
He’s got quite an eclectic accent from multiple languages around him plus American parents. What he hears and sees shapes who he becomes (and how he pronounces the word “water”). It starts with me- I want my most natural reaction when I look at him to be, “What hope you have!” I don’t want to worry about the circumstances working against us – every valiant warrior has to be strengthened somehow.
The way we read what’s in front of us shapes us. I have been out of shape lately, and I’ve experienced more anxiety, weariness and stress than I’ve known in a very long time. In the middle of the nations gathering to pray for us and our lawyer, and in the midst of the generosity of people all around the world investing in us to start a church – the hope of the world, how could I look around and say, “What hope do they have?”
I’m asking God’s spirit to help me change my words, thoughts and enunciation. I’m asking to see with the eyes He created me to see and love with the new heart He gave me. I want to leave a legacy of hopeful exclamation in my family, not fearful questioning. I’m going to start walking into rooms and proclaiming, “What hope do you have!”
