Terrify No More

So last night I read an excerpt from my housemate’s blog and I was completely moved. I have been so impressed by her blogging skills that I have decided to do likewise and add my two cents on prevailing societal issues. Naturally in the wake of the recent xenophobic attacks, I must begin there.

As a foreigner and proud Zimbabwean I am absolutely infuriated! In my view, to set someone alight, and watch them burn to death is a demonic breed of hatred. It absolutely confounds me. How can people do this? Are we so depraved that a sense of humanity no longer exists. I am so hurt, angry, disappointed and scared…so much that I am just numb. And so, to cope with all this I live in a bubble of denial until I am confronted by yet another story of some gruesome killing or attack on a defenceless mother or child.

I remember growing up in Zimbabwe. I used to go home after a week of school and boast to my parents that I had friends from all over the world. Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, SOUTH AFRICA! It was something to be praised. I remember being taught to love everyone equally. At junior school, we were taught to be hospitable to foreigners. We were even encouraged to take foreigners home during weekends because they were too far from home. In fact, there were times when I was so jealous of foreigners because they always got a double portion of love…because they were so far from home. But I come here… I finally become a foreigner and it is a bitter pill.

Between reading the newspapers, endless frowns from locals when they discover that I am black but cant speak their language and that jolly queue at Home Affairs to beg for yet another extension of my permit, I am just plain tired.

But today I revisited a verse that has really shaken my world: Ps 10:14-18:-

But you oh God, do see trouble and grief;

You consider it and take it to hand.

The victim commits himself to you;

You are the helper of the fatherless.

Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;

Call him to account for his wickedness

That would not be found out.

The Lord is King for ever and ever;

The nations will perish from his land.

You hear o Lord, the desire of the afflicted;

You encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

Defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is on earth, may TERRIFY NO MORE.

Enough said. Now my soul, my find rest in God alone.