NO EXCUSES When Eric Delve visited Bolivia he came back changed, challenged and with a vision to see the blessings of Detling 2008
pour out on some of the poorest children across the world.
She stood on the dusty floor of a mud and straw brick
hovel. Her children clustered around, clutching at her
skirts. Outside, the early summer temperature was
already quite high. A single home-made ladder led
to the upper room. The whole family slept up there
on the floor. The daily meal would be cooked over a
wood fire in the open-air hearth outside, or over the
single gas ring linked by a tube to the gas cylinder.
There were five of us visiting. She had done her best to
clean up, and the family’s best blanket had been spread along
a single plank balanced on bricks to form a seat. The family’s
entire wardrobe of clothes was bundled over two ropes
hanging across the corners. She was about 25 but looked 45.
Her name was Concepcion. It was her eyes that got to you.
There was so little hope there. Only when she talked about her
two children who were sponsored did the burden lift a little.
When one of us asked gently, “Is there anything special
we can pray for, for you?” her voice became strangled by
the attempt to hold back her tears. Through the interpreter
she said, “I would like to be able to own this house and
the land that goes with it – but I do not see how that could
be.” We learned that tenants who stay in a property for
10 years automatically gain the right to the land, so the
landlord moves them on in the ninth year. For the princely
sum of £2,000 she could buy the property – just £2,000.
NO EXCUSES I am a bloke from a prosperous country, where we worry
about the stability of our banks, our mortgages and the
prospects of the England football team. Suddenly my concerns
seemed stupid, shallow,
selfish. It was like God was
saying “Open your eyes,
Eric. This is the stuff that
breaks my heart. When is
it going to touch yours?”
I have never had much
time for the guilt-mongers:
the bleeding hearts and
their collecting tins. But
now I was face-to-face
with human need, with the
poverty that blights the lives
of little children and grinds
the poor into the ground. Oh, they manage – they have to. But
don’t let’s excuse ourselves with the fondly maintained illusion
that they are ‘happy with their lot’. It is breaking them down
– human beings like you and I made in the image of God.
I sponsored two more children. It really was the least
I could do. I returned sobered; ashamed of a Christianity
that justifies us in our affluence and does not compel us
to generosity. We have got so much and give so little.
It is time for us to get involved. We really can make a
difference. Church is boring because it’s all words – we never
do anything. It is time to change all that. Sponsor a child, go on
a mission trip, open your eyes and start to agitate for a Church
that makes a difference where it counts – among the poorest of
the poor. Maybe there we will meet Jesus – the real, authentic,
down-to-earth Son of God. After all, didn’t he say “When you did
it for the least of these my brothers, you were doing it for me”?
