I Have A Maker

Sometimes it is the simplest truths that I forget and later God stuns me with.  When the days run together and you strive hard to live healthy and be well in a place, it can be the foundational things that aren’t given much attention.  I am so thankful for God’s ways of bringing these nuggets of Truth to light, sometimes in very beautiful and meaningful ways. 

A week or so ago, we took a little family ride in the car.  It is nice at times to get out in this manner – less hassle and staring eyes.  We were headed in the direction of the two houses occupied by our foreign team members on the other side of town.  We keep going back and forth on whether or not we should relocate to that side of town (more on that in another post), so we were going to see the house again and pray about the decision.  Truth be told, we had had a very long and clausterphobic day in our own yard and just needed some time outside in the gorgeous weather without anyone else’s kids. 

It was that time of day. The time of day where the golden glow of the sun shines on everything in it’s last ditch effort to bathe the world in the color of honey.  The air was clear and warm. Kids were playing on the sides of the road, men were walking home from work.  At a main intersection, A pulled the truck over to buy some veggies.  Little t and I stayed in the vehicle. 

From the cab of the truck I watched life go by. Groups of women walked along the main street, their chadArI’s floating in the breeze.  Young boys played around the truck trying to get my attention.  Cars, trucks and motorcycles zipped past. Donkeys laden with bags of flour and rice lumbered by slowly.  Men bought vegetables from carts on the sides of the road. A woman haggled the price of a cut of meat from a man seated on a cart – he was hopeful that she would buy the last scrap of mutton he had hanging there so that he could call it a day. 

On the edges of the side street where we sat, men were cleaning potatoes and onions and putting them away for the day - folding up the burlap sacks that they had displayed their goods on.  A pair of men, an older and a younger, worked together to shake the onions in a burlap sack.  They tossed them up in the air and as they did, the dust from the bustle of the day floated off the vegetables and lazily up the street towards us, looking like golden snow as it glinted in the late afternoon sun. 

The man A was buying potatoes and onions from caused me to chuckle. He sat at the back of his tarp and combed his long snow-white beard with a comb as he shouted orders to a younger boy.  Obliging, the boy weighed and bagged A’s purchase before taking his money. 

The words to a song popped into my head and immediately tears sprang to my eyes as I meditated on the words there in that truck, surrounded by potatoes and onions, golden sunshine and bearded men.

I have a maker,

He formed my heart

Before even time began,

My life was in Hand.

I have a Father,

He calls me his own.

He’ll never leave me,

No matter where I go.

He knows my name

He knows my every thought

He sees each tear that falls

And He hears me when I call.

Emotionally I was rattled. The depth and power of those words sunk in to my heart and into the reality of my surroundings – opening my eyes to see those around me in a whole new light.  Though the golden sun made them shine physically…suddenly they were bathed in an even more precious light. 

The tired man who hauled a heavy bag on his back, God had formed him in his mother’s womb. He had created Him with love and care.

Every hair on the old potato seller’s head is numbered by the One who flung stars into space.

The lover of my soul is so taken with the women who float by in their chadArI’s. He knows so intimately the prisons (figuratively and sometimes literally) they endure. He captures each one of their tears in a bottle.  He longs to bind up their broken hearts, to be the healer of their hurts. 

Before time began, the God of the Heavens spoke this place – barren and yet so devastatingly beautiful – into existence. Now His heart longs for those who dwell in this place to rest in the fact that He knows their name – a small symbol of how deeply He cares for them. 

He knows every thought in their heads – their frustrations with a broken society, their fears of not measuring up to the impossible standards placed on them by Is.lam, the worries they have about sick kids and little money and scarce water and poor crops and, and, and…He hears them. 

These people that the world would love to hate, or forget, or damn or dispose of; He created them, knit them together, loves them deeply, and longs to gather them to Himself as a hen gathers her chicks.  He has not forgotten the least of these. 

Wow.

I was moved.

I was convicted.

I was crying, and thankful for the reminder.

That evening, the beauty surrounding us didn’t come from the sun saying it’s final goodbyes for the day. It came from eyes that were opened to see God’s fingerprints all over these people and this place.