Another Sunday Night in the City

For those of you who don't know, I teach a Bible study in one of the low-income housing neighborhoods here in Huntsville. I don't quite know why I started. I suspect, looking back at that self-centered time of my life, that I did it so I could add another bullet to my good-girl resume'.

How noble, I thought it would be to be able to say, "I teach inner-city kids. You know, the ones nobody wants?" Then I would piously add, "Where else are they going to hear the truth?" As if I held the only banner in town.

The first four years were tough, especially since I was relying on myself most of the time. Actually, it's still really tough. Constantly-ringing cell phones, smart mouths, wiggly bottoms, snide comments, angry outburst, threats--they are a normal part of our Bible study. They are broken girls, born of broken women. Not to mention the fact that there lies between my students and I, this devlish barrier called race, which in Biological truth doesn't even exist. As Christians we believe we come from the first parents, Adam and Eve. Melatonin is all that seperates us, but yet this wall; you would not believe how impenitratable it is.

Sometimes, I chip away at it. I know I do, when they share something private, personal. Like the day, one of my girls told me how she had been raped on the way home from school. I'm one of the only white women they know and believe you me, I've had to earn their trust a thousand times over. What they know of "my kind" is dirtied by words like slavery, segregation, opression, discrimination. They are not wary without cause. They have a history I cannot even begin to understand. I make concessions to it. I don't mind, if it means that one day they'll trust me.

I can't explain why I love them so. Even now, I can feel the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. Perhaps they remind me of what I once was--fatherless, poor, often rediculed for my hand-me-downs and my mother's odd assortment of boyfriends. I did not know hope until I met Jesus when I was 19. And I am convinced, beyond any doubt, that He is their only hope. Anything else is a band-aid on a gaping wound.

I suppose it is this God-given love that draws me back every week. It's certainly not a big, fat list of souls saved. I haven't seen one girl genuinely surrender her life to Christ. Not one in five years. Now, that's failure with a capital F. But, then I think my friend Elizabeth who works with a people group in one of the most hostile parts of the world. This group of 3 million, claims only three Christian converts, all of whom are now in glory. I consider her a hero not a failure. Sometimes, it is not for us to know or to see, but for us to trust. And so, I will go back next week, and the week after, and the week after that....trusting that one day us seed-sowers will catch a glimpse of the harvest.