A Gift from Another World

This morning after worship, we were given a gift.  That’s a little unusual, but by no means unheard of, in this very relational culture.  Sometimes we’re given gifts of pineapples, papayas, corn, cassava.  Today’s gift was a little different.  It was a broom.

Now this broom didn’t look like any that you would probably recognize.  It consisted of 3 long palm branches with the leaves pulled off on one side, bound together by a leaf used as a rope, so that the remaining leaves all hang on the same side.  It is used for sweeping the dirt courtyards of the homes here in very broad strokes. 

When the little group of twenty or so had finished worship this morning, we said our goodbyes and were getting into our car.  A young woman came up to my wife and said something that we couldn’t understand.  We asked someone else to help us, and though we couldn’t understand her much better, we did figure out that we were to wait because they wanted to give us a broom.  A few seconds later, the young woman came back with the long palm branches that we could only fit on the roof rack of our Toyota Prado. 

Needless to say, I was touched.  I was touched that we would be given a gift for which we have absolutely no use.  I was touched because this young woman could not imagine our home and the wealth in which we live – a home with a grass yard instead of a dirt one.  I was touched because, from her world, she thought of us and gave to us what would be valuable to her.

The phrase, “It’s the thought that counts,” took on a whole new meaning.