Contrasts

Cape Town’s many mountain peaks offer breathtaking views of the peninsula and surrounding waters. They also reveal just how close some of the area’s richest and poorest are to one another.

In the foreground of the above photo, multimillion-dollar estates – complete with pools, tennis courts and horse stables – grace the village of Noordhoek. Not more than a mile or so across the wetlands is the township of Masiphumelele (it’s the dense cluster of homes just beyond the water in the far left of the photo). Masi is home to some 25,000 to 30,000 people crammed into tiny brick homes and aluminum shacks.

Viewing this scene from the top of 2,400-foot Noordhoek Peak, I was reminded of something I posted on this blog when I was here a year ago. I’m posting it again, because it certainly still applies:

Cape Town is a land of juxtaposition. A homeless center next to a stunning seascape. A shantytown on a mountaintop. People in despair alongside people with hope.

There’s so much that’s hard to look upon. A homeless family (parents with two kids) showed up Thursday too late for lunch. Not a scrap of prepared food was left, but “Auntie Joan,” the dear woman who helps run the Living Grace homeless center, managed to find some bread and rice to send them away with. In Red Hill, we learned that a man hanged himself last week, leaving a family behind. Another family had recently adopted a child when the adoptive mother suddenly died of an asthma attack.

It’s easy to become discouraged. But we also meet people like Craig, a 21-year-old who was caught in the crossfire of a gunfight six years ago and is in a wheelchair for life. He has a home nearby, but he comes to Living Grace every day to help out. He has a sweet spirit and an ever-present smile and the love of God in his heart. He could easily be angry at God, but he’s not.

Steven Curtis Chapman has a song called Yours. Substitute Cape Town for some of the places mentioned and you have a picture of the suffering in this part of the world, and the comfort we try to take in knowing God is still in control:

I walk the streets of London
And notice in the faces passing by
Something that makes me stop and listen
My heart grows heavy with the cry
Where is the hope for London?
You whisper and my heart begins to soar
As I'm reminded that every street in London in Yours

I walk the dirt roads of Uganda
I see the scars that war has left behind
Hope like the sun is fading
They're waiting for a cure no one can find
And I hear children's voices singing
Of a God who heals and rescues and restores
And I'm reminded that every child in Africa is Yours

And its all Yours, God, Yours, God
Everything is Yours
From the stars in the sky
To the depths of the ocean floor
And its all Yours, God, Yours, God
Everything is Yours
You're the Maker and Keeper
Father and Ruler of everything
It's all Yours

And I walk the sidewalks of Nashville
Like Singapore, Manila and Shanghai
I rush by the beggar's hand and the wealthy man
And everywhere I look I realize
That just like the streets of London
For every man and woman, boy and girl
All of creation
This is our Father's world

And its all Yours, God, Yours, God
Everything is Yours
From the stars in the sky
To the depths of the ocean floor
And its all Yours, God, Yours, God
Everything is Yours
You're the Maker and Keeper
Father and Ruler of everything
It's all Yours