I watched a beautiful movie tonight. It broke my heart. It was a Zulu-language filmed called "Yesterday," which is also the name of the main character. It follows this woman, a young mother whose husband is away in the city for work, as she gets devastating news that changes her life, her marriage, her relationship to her community.
Africa has, for many years now, held a special place in my heart. This is due in great part, I believe to the AIDS epidemic and the way it ravages lives and leaves families torn apart. This movie reminded me of that, but also gave me new insight into just how heart-breaking a situation exists over there.
Yesterday confronts her husband about the news of her diagnosis - and he beats her. She returns home, leaving him in the city, where he stays until he is forced out of his own illness to see a doctor. He returns home to his wife, already thin and bearing the classic lesions of a man whose body is ravaged by AIDS.
Rumors fly in their small community and when the news that John has "the virus" is confirmed, the community demands his exile. What if he bleeds on us? What if he makes us all sick? Get him out! Yesterday visits a hospital in town, hoping to find a place for her husband - but the waiting list is already many people long and they will not have a bed for months.
And this is the part that broke my heart more than anything else: Yesterday scoured the countryside looking for pieces of scrap metal. She dragged them, herself already ill with the virus, into a field and built a hut for her husband where she could nurse and attend to him in his dying days. The aftermath of AIDS - the orphans, the sick children, the hospitals - has always been alive in my mind and heart. But the present reality - the people who are rejected by their friends and family, who are suffering with no one to lay a healing hand on them - had never struck me before that moment.
My heart is so broken by this thought that I don't know if I have any more thoughts tonight. Pray for Africa, friends.
Dearest Lord -
Be with your children in Africa tonight. Pour out your grace, peace, and love on their wounded hearts and give them the strength to carry on. Open their hearts to your word as you send your servants to them. Let them know there is a place for them in your kingdom, where they will no longer by burdened by the illness and brokenness of this world.
Amen.
1 comment:
Ah, Jess. I love you so much.
You came back home.
Your Father's been waiting all this time, right where you left Him.
As you go forward, view the pain of leaving as a gift....everything you went through, see that as a gift. You will use it. God will use it through you. You will. It will become the way that you connect to an entire world of people who are dying...on the inside.
I would like to write more, but I'm already late to meet some friends for lunch. But I love you very much, dear.
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