Hope...Where has it gone?

Do you need a new pair of glasses to find it?

This week a good friend of mine who has inspired me a lot recently in my quest to understand the situation of the Aborignal people here in Australia, sent me an article describing the living conditions of a community in Queensland. And even i was shocked at how strongly i reacted to it, not to the commuinty's situation, but to the way the article was written.

To quote:

"Driving in from the highway, there are glimpses of the coastline's rawbeauty from the pot-holed, corrugated dirt road. But there is little to findthat is beautiful in Yarrabah itself. It's the smell that hits you first — a pungent cocktail of decaying rubbish,damp and the ocean salt, which leaves chalky white splatters on the fewpossessions the people have. The houses are little more than tin sheds and each accommodates two,sometimes three, big families. It's a reality that means as many as 25people sharing each ramshackle space....

Teenage boys kick a football between makeshift goals between the trees. Thedream of playing professional rugby league might just take them away fromhere. A cluster of girls watch them but don't join in. For them, maybe thereis no point pretending...

Edgar Harris has lived in the area for more than 40 years. He doesn't askfor much. "I want my children not getting sick any more," he says. For him,election year budgets and the glossy promises of a bright indigenous futurefor Australia sound like many other promises made by politicians out toimpress voters."I just want a house," Edgar says. "But I don't think we'll ever get it."

This was my reply:

"My intial reaction to this article, probably not what you are expecting....but it is so easy to focus on the negative, and its quite a hard but important discipline to see the strengths in people and communities because it is the complete opposite to what society (and newspapers) tell us everyday. I personally think its time Australia starts looking for, AND SEEING, the strengths in the Indigenous people. To me, he paints a picture of a community just waiting for the government to give them houses. And call me crazy but I refuse to believe that is an accurate picture of the life of the people in that community. In the regional team work, we often find that it only takes a local team building relationships with the community and focusing on strengths to stimulate the community to act themselves. Check out http://ordinarybeautiful.blogspot.com/ and the entry titled "Future". The blog is written by a good friend of mine who lives in South Africa. You will see the difference i'm talking about. No doubt that situations can be completely horrible and just plain unfair, but its about seeing the hope admist the struggle...Does the story sound familiar?

As Christians I think we should know that better than anyone... and we should be living out our faith accordingly."

To share a personal story of my own: In January and Febuary this year, I was in London with my brother and his partner Debra whose kidneys suddenly failed in in November. While i was there, I spent a lot of time with Debra in hospital while she had dialysis and during that time there was so much uncertainty and anxiety about what her future held, whether the kidneys would recover, whether she could have a transplant or whether her condition would simply attack any new kidneys etc. Every Doctor that spoke to us would tell us a different opinion. One day in hospital a nurse came in and began talking to us, and when she realised that this was THE Debra that had got every doctor completely perplexed as to what to do, the nurse shared in a very compassionate way that they all just felt so sorry for her, such a sudden thing to happen to a young girl, they couldn't believe it....and I know this nurse meant very well, but Debra broke down. She didn't need someone else to make the negative even more concrete. On the opposite scale, people that would react and just focus purely on the positive, she would battle to show them that no, maybe it won't. God taught me a lot through Debra about the need for us to acknowledge the struggle and the suffering when we're journeying with people, yet also learning to discipline ourselves in looking for the positives, allowing ourselves to see the hope.