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Tracking the Trek 2003
What gift do I bring to the altar?July 9, 2003
Matthew 5:23-24—My gift? What gift am I bringing to the altar? If serving or helping or giving, then where, whom, how? Each day the physical need of countless people smacks me in the face. A shoeless boy with his knees tucked into his shirt, sleeping on the dusty sidewalk; a thin, old man squatting next to his bag of limes, pleading for a customer; a half-dazed boy huffing the lingering fumes from an empty aerosol can…the need here is overwhelming.
And yesterday’s visit to Muquattam—the garbage village where the other 
Cairo team is working—revealed even more need. I can’t even list the mixture of emotions that flooded my mind as I walked the narrow streets. Then, the blank, empty, frozen moment when a fragile infant was thrust into my arms at the Sister’s of Charity Orphanage—I wanted to panic, how could I hold someone so frail? Pray. All I could think to do for her was cradle my arms, sway, and pray. Finally, while sitting on the floor next to a quadraspastic ten year-old, so small she fit in a car-seat, I asked, “Why? Why, Lord, why?” I could say/pray nothing else. Anger, confusion, pity, guilt, helplessness, and uncertainty rose with these words.
There’s no way for me to help them all—but how can I ignore one to focus on another? I wish it all…the poverty, the injustice, the illness and disease…could just be erased—not from my memory but from the earth. But what do I do? I continue on my way—I leave the orphanage, the garbage village, the boy on the street, and the old man behind and keep walking. I am only a tourist, a temporary observer, in their world with no idea of what it’s really like to live there.
I felt even more ‘touristy’ stopping by two churches on the way back to the monastery. Standing in a sanctuary amongst a large group was uncomfortable because I felt I was gawking at someone’s place of worship. Undeniably, they were beautiful—unlike any worship centers I’ve ever seen. I wanted to look, to marvel at them—but in silence and in solitude.
The more experiences I have, the more exposure to this diverse city and the millions of people who fill it, the less I understand my place. There is so much injustice, so much need—not just here in Egypt and Africa but also at home in America and South Carolina. What is it that I can do daily to defend justice, to argue the case of the poor? Not what can I plan to do tomorrow or in ten years, but what can I do today, right now…what gift can I bring—what gift am I bringing to the altar each day as I live?
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