The Beauty of Grace

October 7, 2012

On Sunday, I walked this road (and a good number of others!) to the most precious little church I’ve ever seen.  We walked through the African bush (which was hosting zebras on our way home), along rock-scattered dirt roads, across the highway, up a small dirt hill path, and through fields-yet even once we reached the church I didn’t see it…

On the far side of a small mud hut is a thin opening for a door that has never been, and likely will never be, installed.  Ducking inside, you will find 7 rows of plastic chairs where the small congregation of 15 people patiently waits to welcome any visitor who has also come to gather in the presence of The Lord.  This humble and passionate group is made up of the pastor, his wife and child, 4 mothers and their babies, 2 other women, an elderly man, and the two younger men on staff at our YWAM base that my fellow muzungu friend Lisa and I accompanied. 

Needless to say, these two tall, fair-skinned, freckled, young women caused quite the ruckus! Scared babies crying, you know, the whole shebang! Fred, one of the staff members was called outside by the pastor to discuss something (something along the lines of asking what we westerners were prepared to share sing or preach………) in Swahili…TIA! And so following some Swahili praise, worship, and preaching (to which they very graciously added some English in the form of hymns and translation from Fred) we were openly welcomed and asked (fully expected) to come to the front of the church (room) beside the preacher and introduce ourselves.  And after introducing ourselves you could probably predict which of the 3 previously listed options we then chose to continue with when we had Fred, the worship leader at our YWAM base, standing next to us.  I don’t remember how many songs we sang, only that as we did I prayed our voices would not simply pour out into the small room surrounded by mud, but much more into the hearts of these women.  Because without God, there is no way our shaky, out of key, poorly timed English words might have reached these Swahili-speaking women!  But there is no doubt these women spoke to me instantly, from the very moment I entered in on their normal Sunday routine.

In this small room, in these women, I saw much more than mud walls and a filthy dirt floor and second-hand Sunday-best dresses.  I saw hope, I saw determination, I saw inspiration!  These women carried their children, wrapped across their backs with an ordinary piece of cloth, who knows how far to come bring themselves before The Lord, their God in the purest way imaginable.  They came to give a precious offering to the work God is doing in their community through a humble, ambitious pastor.  They came to demonstrate to their young children what it is to love and serve the Lord!  The purity of these women, the humility and gratitude of their hearts is more than I could ever hope to possess.  And in this my heart rejoices; leaps for joy at the reassurance that in God’s eyes I am the same as these humble women: as blameless as Jesus.  That, right there, is the beauty of grace.

~Chloe Anne