I made a thousand excuses. I was tired. I needed a break, some alone time, after one of those mornings where the simplest work feels like trudging through syrup. I’d just spent a weekend in the community – early mornings and late nights and everything in between physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausting. My arsenal was loaded – “Here you are God, here’s a bunch of excuses, all of them as good as the next, pick one!” But it didn’t matter; the boy I walked past with nothing but a smiling glance was going to follow me whether I liked it or not. When I noticed he was tracking my steps I cast him the vague, polite pleasantries in the hope that it would be all he wanted from the token white man. But he kept following. Soon he was shoulder to shoulder with me, a cheeky but strikingly childlike smile stretching across his adolescent face. He started rambling to me in French, but the only thing I could translate was that whatever it was he was asking, he was genuinely interested in getting to know me. But I was tired, so I walked past and walked on. But he followed. When we came to some crossroads I asked him in slow, slightly elevated English which way he was going. He just smiled, and said he didn’t understand. So I carried on walking, as did he. Eventually, having trawled about town lying every time he asked if I spoke any French at all, we got to the bakery I was going to for lunch. Though he was clearly hungry, he didn’t ask for any food. It wasn’t what he wanted. Nevertheless I bought him a nice bit of bread and a bit for the boy begging on the street outside, to massage that pesky ache in my conscience. I continued to walk and he continued to talk. Approaching the little shop I was going into to buy a Coke I prepared to say a not-so-fond farewell to the young man, when I picked out a single word in his hurried French. Orphan. I felt like I’d been hit by a freight train. Not knowing what to do with myself, I invited him into the shop, sat him on a chair and bought him some proper lunch. We sat there in silence, him smiling that broad and beautiful grin, me feeling like Dr. Jekyll looking in the mirror and discovering that he’s Mr. Hyde. I asked him to pray for the food, but he was too shy and instead the lady who owned the shop came over and, placing her hands on our Cokes, thanked God. He was excited to discover that I was a Christian. What a tragedy that sometimes it is not our character that distinguishes us as Christians, but our little religiosities. He pulled out of his pocket a tattered little French Bible. It was the only thing he carried. Throwing it open he clumsily thumbed through the pages then stopped and pushed it across the table to me. Pointing at a verse on the page he kept repeating: “my favourite”, and though I didn’t understand the language, I recognised the verse.
– Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you –
The train hit me for the second time. I thought, what if this morning when he got out of bed, this young boy asked of his Father in heaven that today, somehow, he would meet someone who cared? What if this morning he simply asked for his daily bread and as he did so, opened up that tattered little Bible and read the promise of Jesus: Ask and it will be given to you? What if today I was God’s messy, flesh-and-blood answer to the cry of a boy’s heart, longing for love? And I almost missed it. I almost missed Him – Jesus disguised in the face of an orphaned boy named Francois, walking the streets of Likasi in search of a smile. I thought: how often we walk past? How often in the noise of the madding crowd do we miss the Father’s voice, calling us to stop and look around? How often do we miss that little gift of God – that invitation to the inexplicable privilege of being the answer to someone’s prayer? Even today someone cries out to a God they aren’t sure they believe in and he says: I am coming; I am sending my son, my daughter, to be the light of life to you who are lost in darkness. And what shall we do? Walk on? Or stop and say ‘Yes’ to the invitation of Jesus, compelling us to give of ourselves. Such is the mystery of his presence in us, letters from Christ to a broken world, signed and sealed in love, not written on paper and with ink but on human hearts and with the blood of Jesus. Today God invites me to answer the cry of just one heart. And what does he ask of me? Only that I act justly, that I love mercy, and that I walk humbly with my God. Or perhaps you could say – only that I never carry on walking when God stoops down to touch a heart in love.
