2002 YEAR REPORT

MY JERICHO ROAD
[By Esme Vorster]

It's hard to relate, Lord
People in need. Many people.
Whether they're Jobless, homeless, Aids sufferers,
or hungry people without food.
Living in the streets and squatter camps - places I don't know.
Names I cannot pronounce in languages I don't understand.
They are not all a long way away, some just around the corner.
Magazine pictures, with no more reality
than the picture on the back of a Kellogg's packet.
Even those nearer home, looking for food in my dustbins, are distant form my experience.
Statistics. There's safety in numbers:
I can forget that some of them are in church with me, I can forget the humanity behind them...

Men, women, children, who feel, and laugh, and cry.
Not much laughter though, more crying.
Tears watering the parched ground, irrigating seeds of pain.
The only crop that grows in the desert.

I could hide behind the questions.
Why does it happen? Why so much suffering?
I could blame others..Politicians...Exploiters...
That is fashionable - and true.
Why Lord?
I hide behind the questions, and do nothing,
waiting for an answer, because I'm scared.
Overwhelmed. Frightened to get involved.
"Is it my ministry....?" I ask as I turn away form the beggar in the street.

And who is my neighbour? I can't argue, Lord, I know.
And the Absent Samaritan?
Yes, Lord, I know that too.

I know the answer has to begin with me.
Maybe I can't do a lot (more than I know, did you say?)
but I can do something.
Together with others, together with You
I can spread Your love around.
Show me how.
So that through me, today,
Maybe through a cup of soup, a slice of bread.
Someone may catch a glimpse of Your love.
May find new life and HOPE.
May find the open door into Your kingdom.

And, Lord, as I pray for people in need,
as I hear the crying in the city streets, and far away,
let me not be deaf to the cry on my Jericho road.

The past year has been so full...

We hope that letter above gives you some kind of insight into the activities of the past year...

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