Snowboots

This is a journal entry after my visit to the Mathare slum...

Snowboots

It takes a lot for me to emotionally connect with something or someone outside of my sphere of influence. It takes alot for me to shed tears. But God has made my heart tender because I now have children of my own. I saw a boy today while in the Mathare slum. He was wearing snowboots. In his school uniform made up of a button up shirt, V-neck sweater, knee length shorts and probably a belt, he had on his feet black, mid-calf high, zip up, muddied snowboots. It was June in Kenya. While many others wore flip-flops, sneakers, plastic sandals or no shoes at all, these were his boots that day---everyday.

In my house we have all sorts of shoes. Shoes for summer, fall, winter, even spring shoes. Sneakers for school in the fall, Crocs for summer play, Wellies for springtime rain and mud, and snowboots for cold and snow. My four year old son has all of these shoes. Many of each kind to choose from daily. He may even change shoes four or five times a day! He has the same snowboots as the boy in Kenya. Lately his shoes of choice have been snowboots. It is June in Colorado. While most people have unearthed their flip-flops from last summer or bought new ones from Old Navy, and women, including myself, are showing off their pedicures, my son chooses to put on his snowboots. Wearing a tank top and shorts he traipses through our backyard hunting dinosaurs or picking dandelions...all the while LOVING his snowboots.

Today, God put his hands on my shoulders, turned me around to peek my head inside a small, dark school room in order to open my eyes to find a little boy wearing his snowboots. I didn't talk to the boy. I don't know his name, but I think he was proud of his boots. They are his only pair of shoes but they keep his feet dry from the rain and clean from the sewage and mud in the alleys of the slum. My son is proud of his boots too. They don't serve much of a purpose to him in June, they actually make his feet all sweaty. But he doesn't care, he loves his boots.

God brought me half-way around the world to the slums of Nairobi to see those snowboots. I now realize we really are all the same. My son loves his boots in the same way that boy in the slum loves his. When we stand before our Lord at judgment it will not matter if you died in the slum or in a penthouse--death is the ultimate equalizer. All that matters is did you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and body and did you love your neighbor as yourself? Love is universal. Love can happen anywhere. I hope I loved well during my time in Kenya. Those boys of Fountain of Life have lived more life than I ever will. They came from the slums. But through Love they have been saved in body and eternally. I KNOW God is Love. And when we love God is there.