brittney's mokkatam poem

Our youngest daughter Brittney just wrote a poem from the garbage city of Mokkatam in Egypt, which we want to share:

This place is dirty, rank, filthy.
I think mostly now about the flies.
They love the putrid smell,
The decomposition, the heat.
They rise, circle, swarm.
I think of this village, of these people:

Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world To be rich in faith?
Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the kingdom
He promised to those who love Him?

And I think you and the flies
Have similar ideas about
What makes perfect living conditions.
The babies’ faces are crawling with flies –
In the doorway of Om Ibrahim’s one-room
Hovel they pass freely.
They dance in the stairwell of the school.
Flies love stench, decay, neglect.

The flies love poverty, it’s where they thrive.
Where the flies go, so too do you.
The poor are your chosen people
Your Israel, your Covenant.
Among the poor you move, you abide, you alight.
Your spirit surrounds your people
Like a swarm.

Brittney will be in Egypt for one more week. Please join us in praying that she would finish her time there well and that there would be both fruit that lasts and seeds that spreads.