pink silk night gown

Several days ago while at the government hospital in Swaziland a young woman in a hot pink night gown changed my ministry perspective forever.  It was just like any other day at the hospital. I started off by visiting with mothers in the children’s ward, and then found my way through the long open air corridors toward the women’s ward. 

The smell is like a stangnate mix of new ace bandages and old cabbage.  The ward is one big rectangular room.  The worst cases are at the back and the less severe are toward the front.  Starting at the front and working my way back I sit and listen to the needs: broken legs, burned hands, trouble breathing, snake bites, crocodile attacks, and TB.  No one ever says AIDS. 

I pray with them and read them scripture.  The further towards the back I get the more apparent it is that AIDS is taking its toll on thier bodies.  They lay naked on the beds; only skin where their voluptious bodies used to be.  Their hands are too weary to swat the flies that land on their faces.  This is the very face of death.  This is poverty and disease.  This is the work of the enemy. 

There was something that caught my eye, something that stood out among the dispair, a silk hot pink night gown on a girl in the back corner bed.  She was young no doubt, but she seemed very old.  I was only half way through the room, but my mind was captivaded by this silk hot pink night gown. 

It looked like something any sixteen year old American girl would love to own.  Pictures crossed my mind of sixteen year olds I know.  How different are their lifes from this girl’s?  I felt a rush of emotion as I saw them laying there sick and dying.  (It was your daughter, your younger sister laying there dying.) I continued to pray for other women towards the front of the ward, and looked forward to reaching the back of the room.  I thought about how if it was girls that I knew and loved I would start at the back of the room.  I would spend most of my time there with them at the end.  I would try to make them understand God’s grace and mercy.  I would show them HIS love. 

The pink silk night gown changed my minsitry perspective because before I reached the back of the room the girl died.  I sat there holding the hand of another young lady as the nurses brought her body out.  That day I prayed for the rest of the ladies with a fervency and passion that I have never known.  Latter as I prayed I knew that I could never start at the front again.  God used that girl to teach me urgency and compassion.  I will always go to the back rooms of life.  I am a bearer of the message of hope and slavation.  My place is in the back.