It IS a Jungle Out There

  


1. Parents allow their children to play outside after the sun sets.
2. Community isn’t a noun. It’s a verb (but don’t try to use it in a sentence).
3. Television consumes fewer than the average eight hours a day. As a matter of fact, most households don’t even own one.
4. Education and educators are valued.
5. Families don’t mind spending time together.
6. Locks, securities systems and doors aren’t necessary. People trust each other with their things.
7. Good exercise is part of the lifestyle, not something that is prescribed.


I remember sitting in Sunday school, being threatened with the prospect that I might be one of the few destined to end up in some jungle in Africa, with nothing to eat but a bowl of living slugs and the dread of coming home to a world that accidentally had forgotten I existed.

Well, I’m not in Africa (yet), but I had the privilege to catch a swift glimpse of the jungle here in Peru, and I can’t help but feel that the jungle isn’t quite as dangerous as we would hope to think. We’ve often prided ourselves in our clean streets and claims to leave no child left behind, to protect our citizens by taking away their personal protection and to let the irresponsible speak without consequence, but have we missed something?

I do love America, I truly do. But when I stepped into one of the villages near Iquitos, I couldn’t help but feel that it had, in its own way, encapsulated many of the nobilities that the United States once determined to have. To be sure, there weren’t white picket fences and mothers and fathers paired with one son and one daughter, but there were hard work and beliefs and togetherness. There were diligence and patience and friendliness. There was something that a person would be willing to fight for, something that he would be destitute if he lost. In short, there was the sacred feeling of home.

But no meals of living slugs.

The Least of These

I don’t remember looking down, but I suppose I did. I know that the road wasn’t paved and that the rickety bridge had gaps large enough to see the shallow river slushing beneath it. I must have looked up too. Pictures confirm that the mountains lorded over the little village, but I don’t remember looking up either.

I don’t remember seeing anything else, just him. For a minute in both of our lives, we were in the same place: the outskirts of Huaraz, wrapped in the Cordillera Blanca of the Andes.

There are safety precautions that you must take in a foreign countries, and I have been given more than one speech about things that happen when people don’t respect cultural boundaries in Lima. I wasn’t in Lima, anymore, though, and it was as if God took His finger and wrote on my heart, “Him. Help him.”

He was mid-stride, making his way across the bridge. I’m not sure how old he was. By his stature and mannerisms, he couldn’t be older than twelve, but his eyes indicated that he had been through enough to be older than I. He had brown eyes. They all have brown eyes. They’re all a little dirty and they’re all a little too slow to smile. It’s easy to look away from most of them. They walk alongside of you, buried under a mass of candy or scarves or drinks, and, with pleading voices ask you to buy something. They tag along at your heels, looking for money.

But he was different. His eyes didn’t beg. His mouth didn’t utter a noise. His hands didn’t carry things to sell. His eyes caught mine.

We both maintained our pace, walking towards each other yet going two very different ways, I with my North American sense of “You’re not going to rip me off” and he with his unassuming manner.

I looked at him again and noticed that he was still looking at me. Not staring, not begging, not sizing me up, just looking. It was somewhere along here that I noticed why he wasn’t trying to sell me anything, why he hadn’t been at the corner with the other boys. He had no hands.

If ye do it to the least of these, ye do it unto me.

The words of Christ resonated in my heart. Practicality, however, soon fought back. If I stopped for this boy, others would swarm around. If I stopped for him, I would hold the rest in the group up. If I stopped for him, I would be inconvenienced. Besides, how could I be sure that he wasn’t just trying to make me feel sorry for him?

We walked closer still, losing then regaining eye contact. I tried to rip my gaze from his eyes, but it felt awkward as my eyes fell to his hands, not the bridge. His arms maintained a jogging position, and both functionless stubs were in the air. His left hand had two dwarfed fingers coming out of it, and the right had one. I diverted my eyes upward again and found that he was still looking at me.

As the distance between us lessened, my thoughts quickened. My mind became a blurred mess of the information I’d been given, a mix between “Just don’t look; keep walking,” and the thought that God puts people in our lives so that His name can be glorified.

If ye do it to the least of these, ye do it unto me.

I had a split second to make the decision, a second that would reveal if I would let Christ’s love outshine my selfish arguments.

I let him walk by.

And this, ignoring a handicap child, is how my actions defined Christian charity that day. This is how I acted as His feet, His eyes and His hands. What manner of love is this? Of course, I tried to rectify my response after I climbed into the bus, and the excuses were comfortable. I know I was wrong, though.

I’m not recording my actions as a form of penance – I’ve been graciously forgiven. It’s more of an attempt to show how irrational we act in the name of rationality. We do a pretty thorough job of deceiving ourselves, and instead of recognizing Whom the deception is effecting, we applaud our street smarts and go on our merry way. We are the body. How many times have I (do we) let people walk by?


If ye do it to the least of these, ye do it unto me.

"But you must learn to lose, child. The Lord teaches the old to lose. The young don't know how to learn it. Some people is born to keep. Some is born to lose." William H. Armstrong

And response.

"What appears to me to be man's decline is, to His eye, advancement; what afflicts me is acceptable to Him." de Tocqueville