The Moment that Stopped Eternity

 I saw her in market yesterday.

She was walking amongst stalls, sampling g-nuts from various vendors. She looked as if she had put on some weight since her last visit to my house when she was in need of food for herself and her little one. Her head was freshly shaven and she was actually wearing close-to-normal clothes, making her almost blend in to the melting pot of market colors, smells, and movements. If it weren't for the momentary eye-lock between she and I, maybe I would have even overlooked her as part of the background, dismissed her as just one in the sea of faces before me.

But that locking of eyes, the brief acknowledgment that yes, we have a history, she and I...is what grasped my heart and made me utter a momentary prayer for this one soul in desperate need of salvation. I'm  not sure why she looked away as soon as our eyes caught each other...did she know?  

 ...Did she know that I knew her history, a sliver of her plight in this cold, cruel world? Was it that I was now on her turf instead of she on mine, and she didn't want people to know that she was friends with the muzungu, for fear that they would mock her and send her back to us whenever she searched for help amongst her own? Was it shame from what she had done in order to put food in her stomach and give life to her child? 

...Where was her child anyway? My eyes searched the crowd for the one she had tried to give me the first time she came by our house, the one who screamed her lungs out in fear of abandonment the second time...Maybe if I had known then what I know now things would be different. 

..."Where is the child?" I wondered, with a growing pit in my stomach... I looked around again, helplessly searching for the little girl who had seen way too much way too early. But when I looked up, she would no longer look at me. What was it? I hoped beyond hope that it did not involve that little girl. I hoped that maybe it was the mental illness perhaps, or maybe the alcohol she hid beneath her breath.

Whatever the reason was, eternity stopped in that brief moment, and Jesus entered. 

He saw her, and He saw me, and He saw the little child wherever she was- 

broken vessels in desperate need of the saving hand of grace to lift us from sorrow and despair.  

Did she see Him? Did she feel Him? 

Because I did. 

 He was in our midst, seeing into both our hearts, 

injecting Himself into both of our stories, 

and extending His grace and mercy.

 

This is Life.

{when eternity stops}