A healthy and beautiful baby boy entered the world yesterday. He has yet to know what his future holds. For now, he feels safe in his mother’s embrace.
His mother, a carrier of “the virus” knows too well the stigma and challenges of living with HIV Aids. She has one other child – a 6 year old girl – who she loves dearly and because of her love, has sent her to live in the countryside with a relative where she will have food to eat.
She earns what little income she can washing clothes for people but this job is backbreaking work and so the past few weeks she was unable to work. Her rent is due but there is no money for rent and very little for food.
Despite her troubles, this woman smiles constantly, so much that people know this about her – she is the smiley woman.
Thanks to one of our donors, we have been able to help “Smiley” with 2 months rent to get her through the period of unemployment for last month and this coming month as well as provide her with some food. We are able to teach her regarding safe breastfeeding practices for her son and support her through these first 6 weeks of his life. Today we can be Christ to her.
Some days the picture is bleak and the questions overwhelm. How will this woman survive? What kind of life will this little boy have? What will their futures look like? Often we can not see beyond today and when we look farther, we see a world without possibilities and without hope.
In the Bible Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of it’s own. Sufficient for today is its own troubles.
When we focus on the troubles of tomorrow and the next day and the next year, we can fall into this trap of anxiety. It is then that we miss out on what today brings.
Today brings – the joy a mother experiences when she gazes into her newborn child’s face, and ponders the mystery of birth, that such a wondrous creation was formed in her body. Today brings the gratitude that she has a roof over her head, food to eat, and loving people supporting her. Today is a day to celebrate life – this little boy’s life – who is valuable and loved and a unique human being imagined and now breathed into life by the Divine God Almighty.
In this work and in life, it is far too easy to focus on what we can’t control and yet, instead, Jesus points us in a different direction, a direction of trust, of hope in His divine promise that He sees us and hears our prayers and despite a life of troubles, He cares for us even more intimately than we can care about our own children.
Can we trust Him with our futures, even when there seems to be little hope? Can we allow Him to be our hope? Can we leave the worries of tomorrow for tomorrow and approach each day with gratitude, looking for the mysteries present around and in us, and able to whisper “Abba Father your grace is sufficient. In you I will put my trust.”
