The Rooster

The country we work in has seen a lot of violent conflict.  Many lives have been lost in the waves of conflicts, and much destruction has been done.  The destruction is still evident, but it has faded in the 10+ years of reconstruction.  A person who has not lived through the years of fighting can easily forget all the damage that has been done to the hearts of the people that walk this land.  A person who did not lose a loved one in the conflicts here does not know what sort of pain lies in the historical narrative of this land. 

I am one of those persons who does not know the extent of damage or depth of heartache done in recent years.  Sometimes I forget this.  I like to think that I have learned a little bit in the 5 years we’ve been here.  For that reason, I bought this rooster, as a reminder to myself.

This rooster was made in the late 90’s.  It was hand carved from a single piece of lapis.  Birds are a loved animal here, roosters included.  This rooster was carved to a high enough quality that he was sold and moved along to one of the premier shops in the biggest city in the northern region.  He sat on the shelf with other fine hand carvings in a beautiful display case.  Then one day in the year 1999 or 2000, someone who was guided by religious extremism; someone possessed with the task of enforcing his ideals, came and broke this rooster.  He smashed the display case with the intent of destroying all the carved images.  They were, in his mind, idols that were an abomination to God. 

I don’t know why the shop owner saved the broken rooster.  He had to throw away most of the hand-carvings because they were broken beyond recognition.  Perhaps he saved this one because, although broken, it could still stand.  For whatever reason, he saved it. 

For about 12 years this broken rooster sat on the shelf unappreciated.  When I spotted him he was laid down among other dusty, junky, antique trinkets.  I asked about it, and the shopkeeper told me the story that I’ve told you.  When asked how much he would sell it for, the shopkeeper shrugged and said, “take it for $5.”  I gathered that it had much more value when it was first finished and put on display.

What’s the use of a broken rooster, and why did I bring him home?  He’s a survivor.  He’s beaten up and broken, but he’s a survivor.  He didn’t get thrown away or buried under dirt when so many other things like him did.  Still he did not have enough value to be sold, so he sat uselessly on the shelf.

How many poor people of this land have been like this rooster?  How many people were beaten and killed by foreign invaders in the 80’s?  After that how many were caught in the crossfire of a civil war that wreaked of evil?  After that how many were oppressed and impoverished as religious fundamentalists laid the culture and the economy to waste.  In each phase of conflict poor bystanders of the fighting parties were beaten and killed, but others survived.  Some have weathered through all of those waves of conflict.  They show the weight of those hardships in wrinkles on their brow.  They are the survivors.

Surviving hasn’t been easy; those that have survived have not been untouched.  No one can undo all that the wars have done to them, just as I cannot put the smashed and lost legs of the rooster back on.  We cannot quickly make this people what we want them to be: peaceful, world-servants, a democracy.  We cannot do anything with them until we realize who they are and how they got to be that way.  We fail if we view them as broken objects that we will quickly fix.  We can get hurt if we don’t realize that they may not play well with others, because others have not played well with them.  We might be tempted to just leave these broken people on the shelf, hoping that someone else will come along and deal with them.

Looking at this rooster today, it’s not very attractive, but try looking at it through a different perspective.  Imagine how it looked when it was first made.  Think of the value the creator saw in it.  Consider the care that he used in carving and polishing it.  If we see the value that the Creator saw, then why won’t we take them, dust them off, set them upright again and say: you’re worth something, even after what you’ve been through, there’s a dignity about you; you can still do what you were made to do. 

In the case of the rooster, he can still stand on my shelf and make a curious decoration piece to admire and talk about.  In the case of this people, they can still discover and serve in the Kingdom.  They just need us to care enough to come and work with them, and to point them in that direction.