The Least of These

At a station in India
When I tried to eat
suddenly,
a small, dirty hand
came in front of me

And I saw the dark face
of a child
staring at me
with sunken eyes

Embarrassed and even scared
I put on his palm
a small piece of food and
quickly shut the window

The train moved,
but his eyes kept
gazing at me—deeper
the more I pretended not seeing.

This of twenty years ago still
haunts me, and often
as I sit around the table
I feel his eyes gazing…

Yorifumi Yagushi,
Sapporo, Japan

Seven years ago I walked down the streets of Mexico City, leaving a fancy restaurant to go to a tourist’s safe market. The church group that I was with was highly protective of us foreigners; the Mexican church members walked in a circle around the Americans, shooting fierce looks at anyone who gazed at us too hard. Thus I walked inside a bubble, shepherded from street to cushioned bus. Though I was safe from external harm inside that armor of church members, I was not safe internally.  

I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Lined up underneath all the buildings on the side of the street were beggars. Whole families sat on a single, dirty blanket. One woman lay curled up fetally with her two baby boys. I could see every bone in her body, my eyes lingering over the bulging balls of her knees and knuckles, the straw-thin bones in her fingers. The babies’ eyes were open and dull, too tired to cry. I turned my head away. Across the street another woman sat leaning against the side of a building for support. Her skeletal hands held up a wooden bowl asking for money. The taste of food from the restaurant was still in my mouth; it tasted poisonous. The food in my belly leaped to my throat as if to choke me. I stared at my feet.

What I remember more than the women, more than the families, are the little girls.  Spaced in between the families on their mats were little girls playing accordion. I remember watching their spindly fingers run up and down the keys like tiny spider legs. One girl looked at me, and I couldn’t look away. I still remember her—those fingers playing quickly, mechanically, her tiny body hid behind the frame of her instrument, her black hair a greasy mass around her face, dark shadows under her eyes—her eyes questioning, sad, condemning. Seven years ago, on a street in Mexico City I locked eyes with a dying child and walked away. Seven years later, her eyes are still haunting me. 

I’ve been thinking about this girl a lot lately. As I am getting ready to go to Mumbai and visit the slums, I have to prepare my heart for the horror of walking past people who are diseased, or starving, or even dying. I have to prepare my eyes to meet other eyes that will linger with me seven years, or perhaps twenty years like in the poem, or perhaps for the rest of my life. And honestly, there is no way to prepare myself for the slums, because they are not meant to exist… Part of the reason this blog took so long to write was because I couldn’t find the words to accurately describe how saddening it is to be surrounded by such poverty. Looking into that little girl’s eyes so long ago, there was such a deep, innate sense that this is not how things are supposed to be. If people are really created in the image of a divine God (as I believe they are), they are not meant to live their life reduced to humiliating, dehumanizing conditions of squalor, and they are not meant to die from hunger. I can’t really “prepare my heart” as I said, because the only natural response of the heart is sorrow.

Jesus says, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me” talking about giving food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, shelter to the wanderer, looking-after to the sick, and visiting to the prisoner. To me, this verse has always held a bit of a promise that I will encounter God through service to the poor. It is certainly true that I met God seven years ago. Walking away from the street, I broke down and wept. The entire day, I saw the city through a blur of tears. I cried on the bus, shaking with sobs, my sister Anna stroking my hair. As my heart was breaking, I felt God’s heart breaking too. I felt a voice inside me say, “Renee, all your compassion is but a drop in the ocean of my compassion. All the agony and suffering inside you, every ounce of sorrow, is just a pale reflection of the grief I feel right now.” On that day, I was met with my own poverty of compassion, of justice. “Renee,” God said, “I have seen your want and I will fill you.”

It’s impossible to have an encounter with God, and walk away unchanged. Jacob wrestled with God and walked the rest of his life with a limp; Moses saw God’s glory and his face burned so bright it couldn’t be looked upon; Paul met Jesus along the Damascus road and was left blinded. Like Jacob, I was left wounded. My heart ached! But in that wounding I was also blessed, in the cracks of my sorrow, I felt myself being filled with God’s love. Now, I look back those seven years, and I still see those penetrating eyes. I feel convicted, overwhelmed, and scared. Now though I know that God sees those eyes too…