Rome or Romania, pt. 3

3/25
Yesterday, we met an angel named Betty. We didn’t know she was an angel until today when she and her Canadian husband, Hardy (sp?). They bussed us around Medgidia to pockets of poor where the kids we played and prayed with slipped out through holes in these pockets. But at least the city was fortunate enough to have pants to wear. Regretfully, I cannot say the same for some of the children today. Shirt and boots would suffice for multiple children because many of the parents refuse to wake up even to dress their own snot-dried face, let alone their dirty, disfigured bundles of joy. Instead, Betty, Hardy, and on occasion one other couple rise early in the morning to cross the bridge to where these families live in exile. By 7:00 in the morning, these front-liners present the schools with clean, combed, and awake children.

“You can cry in your heart because my heart is always broken,” Angel Betty quips. When you work in these conditions, time lives only as a luxury. These scenes not only beg for money but also beg to argue with Solomon in Ecclesiastes. There is there a time to mourn, unless sadness falls with your head on its way the pillow. Nor is not a time to weep, unless tears roll with each brush through mangled, matted mess of mop.

The puddles on the morning street provided the necessary evidence that God Himself wept the night before as he foreknew what we would watch wearily within the ensuing hours. Open hands welcomed us into open homes more cramped than our adulterous hearts and sparser than our skinny world perspective.


As we crowded the muddy, manured yard our guiding Angel Betty mentioned something about leading a song or two with some of these fine folks. Indeed, I blessed God for giving me the sunglasses covering my eyes that day otherwise the tears resting in my eyes would have been exposed beyond repair. Verbatim, “God, if you make me worship with these people, I am going to lose it.” But instead, the chill of the grueling wind froze that salty water in place, hidden behind my dark lenses. We ended up signing for them “Open The Eyes Of My Heart” (that we had learned before we left Egypt) where I managed to distance myself just enough to keep the dammed tears from crashing through. What a privilege it would have been to worship with those who are so near my Daddy.

“They are my friends, but they steal from even me.”

Daddy, how could you be so cruel as to set before our eyes and in our very hands your Kingdom then leave us actionless? You’ve heard it said that the Kingdom is near, but I tell you, hell yeah it is; its in your front yard.

If you want me hear (here), then I need to know. Bless you Daddy for your faithfulness and persistence after my stubborn, stone(d) heart. May the name of Jesus Christ move swiftly and mightily across this country. Amen.