We’ve been in Swaziland for about a week now and in the midst of roosters crowing and goats sneezing on our homestead, and driving around all over Manzini and Timbutini on mostly dirt roads, we are nearing the beginning of structured ministry. Boy, I cannot wait.
We’ve had an opportunity to visit all the care points in Timbutini, which is located near Manzini. And at every single one, we have arrived and immediately had dozens of children flock to us wanting us to pick them up and play with them. They make it very easy to love them. They are kids running around and having a blast. However, holding and playing with these children doesn’t necessarily mean that we are loving them the way they should be loved.
Swaziland is said to be an over-evangelized and an under-discipled nation. Our pastor here said that the average Swazi has received Christ seven times. What the people of Swaziland need are people to demonstrate how to walk in Christ and live out their lives for Him. Some of the biggest problems of this country is infidelity in marriage, polgamy, and witchcraft. The cavalier attitude towards a God-honoring marriage has been the driving force behind the HIV/AIDS epidemic and witchcraft has led many people astray from the Truth. These people need the love of Christ revealed to them in a different way.
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” -Mark 2:17
The people of Swaziland are beautiful, friendly and respectful. They are also very poor and, with 40% of the country with HIV/AIDS, sick. They are in desperate need love, and they know it. The kids who flock to us at the care points and the sick at the Hope House in Manzini attest to that. But unless that love is eternal, it will never be enough. Our 3 months here would be a blurb on the map and easily forgotten.
The love of God is a balance of truth and grace that isn’t easy for dedicated Christians to balance, let alone people who have never had anyone show them how to walk by faith. My heart is slowly breaking for these people, not only when I see their poverty, but also their need for truth.
I want to love the people I come into contact with, but most of all I want to point them to the real love of God that these people claim to have but are abandoning on a daily basis. It will be only by God’s grace that real change will come in Swaziland.
