Contrasts

We live in the midst of contrast. At times it becomes unbearable. And yet we live in it.

Tonight the kids are warm in bed. Layers of clothing and a soft blanket for them. We will turn in a few minutes ourselves.

Just 200 meters from us Mrs. Candy and her family are huddled under a bush. The slum house the were living in got demolished a few weeks ago. The slum lord was ousted by another political party - and the area of the slum walled off.

Mrs. Candy lived on the footpath for some time - and finally went over to a near-by empty plot of scrub-land (where no doubt a building will come up in some near future). She stores her things under one big scrub bush - and at night she and her daughter and son go to another family who are under another bush and sleep with them.

Mrs. Candy has TB and HIV. She comes from a family of professional beggars. She says she has stopped sitting outside the local temple to get alms - but gets some money by collecting garbage from bins like the ones in the picture above. She has not been responding well to the TB medications and is probably resistant to the first line drugs.

It is so crazy for us to live in luxury and our sister in Christ to be under a bush.

Mrs. Candy has a faith - it may be the size of a mustard seed - but we believe that God has a place for her to rule and reign throughout eternity. There are many in this world who will end their lives having given large endowments (I just got a publication today saying that my alma mater is constructing a US$ 459 million cancer hospital - and much of it funded by one man) - but if they are not adopted into the family of the Maker, Owner and Sustainer of all...

what good is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul...