Toddlers do not SEE POOR.

The other day our 2 year old Josiah suddenly asked;
"Mummy, where my friends Tondo?"

He was asking where his friends from Tondo were. As soon as it came out his mouth I got to thinking. He has no concept yet of poverty. No idea that some people live in wealth while other scavenge through trash to find food. He has no awareness whatsoever that Tondo is looked on as one of the most disadvantaged and impoverished areas in the country. He has no idea that many people fear the place and  label the community with stereotypes.

All he knows are His friends are there and he loves them. He gets so excited when we do weekly leadership and volunteer training from our home for members of the community. He watches from the window with excitement waiting to see them appear at our gate and shouts " yeh friends".
 When we take him to our church in Tondo he claps when we turn off at the main road and drive through the narrow pathway leading to where Kalayaan Community Ministries is based. He doesn't see the mounds of black bin bags piled high or the swarms of flies.  He has never reacted to the smell, the lack, the dirt and so on.. He does not feel sorry for anyone there. He has no idea there is much sadness there.When he peers through the window of our car he says "my friends Tondo". He has no awareness of the place yet- only the people. he knows when we get inside the church that his "mga Kuya at mga Ate" (big brothers and sisters) will come inside to play with him, sing, laugh and love him. He does not have a clue yet that the church that he sometimes gets to come to is actually situated in the middle of a rubbish dump.

I thought this was so beautiful and a reminder to me about how I look at people.

How different would our communities be if we only got to know people? What if we never knew their past, where they lived or gossip surrounding them?.Would we be less judgmental?  Would we treat them differently? How many times have we formed an opinion about someone because of what we have heard about them?

JESUS SAW PEOPLE.

So many times in the bible it says " When Jesus SAW..."
" when he saw him"
"when he saw her"
"when he saw them"

It's more than seeing with the physical eye. He stopped for people that others would walk past. He listened to their stories. Imagine God - who already knew everything about them and still listened to their stories! He saw their hearts. He saw them as they would be - what they could be.

I remember when we first set foot in Tondo, of course we saw the awfulness of the place, but it was the people that gripped our hearts and changed the course of our lives. There was one child walking towards us through the trash. Everything seemed grey- apart from her. She smiled and Ron described her as a "ray of sunlight".
I think if we had only seen the heartbreaking sights of the place we would not have returned. But we had the privilege of seeing the people- they are why we went back again and again. From seeing- to knowing - to loving them.

Obviously you have to tell and show people the poverty and the sadness so that they are moved with compassion to help. No matter how many smiley faces and joyful spirits there are , not one of them should be living in a place we heard once described as"the edge of hell". Our friend who said these words in a cry for justice has been in around 80 countries and been to many of the most impoverished areas. He says he has never been anywhere like the community in Tondo dump site area.

If only we had the eyes of Jesus for just a moment....to really see. I know we would be moved with compassion in a new way.
The little touches of compassion that so grips our hearts is more than wanting to help- it's a burning, passionate, heart cry and motivation to do all we can to make wrong things right for people who were created by the very fingers of God. A life mission to see justice where injustice cripples souls, bodies and minds through poverty. A determination to do the hard work and let God do the heart work.

My desire is that you would not forget the places we describe in hope that you feel a stirring up to pray and act, but more than the place, I desire that you know the people. I want you to hear their stories. I am not a writer by any means but I pray the rambling of my heart would describe their lives in a true and balanced way, honoring who they are and in some way, place in us all a burden to do something.
Whether in Manilas slums or in a well to do estate somewhere in the world, none of us have to look  very far to find hurting people or someone that needs help.

Oh that we could really see.