It's her wedding day, but she's not happy. She's not sad too, she doesn't know what she's feeling because anyway, she has seen this happening through her nine years of existence and she has to go through this too. It is the norm of her society. She first has to go through the cut, a wedding can't happen without it, not when a village elder is the 'lucky prince charming'.
A painful 'honeymoon' awaits the poor nine-year-old female child, one, because she's young, and as if that is not enough, she has just gone through the cut, and sadly she is not even allowed to heal. (A village elder needs not to wait for her to heal or even better, for her to physically mature, he needs a wife, a young wife! Urgently!) She knows she doesn't have a life ahead, not when she's not allowed to go to school like her outcast female friends, not when she is only an object- an object of childbearing, an object of pleasure, a child doomed to be married by a man double her father's age.
As she sits on the hot sand older women surround her bleeding body as one of the women is sewing the cut, the poor child restrains her tears because she is not supposed to cry in the ritual. Her heart is full of bitterness both for her sad life and for the sad life she's about to go through. She's not the only one, even the ones taking her through the cut have gone through the same life, only that maybe they were not lucky enough to have a village elder as their husbands.
Life for them takes the same turn over and over through the years. Darkness reigns in not only their culture and traditions but also in their hearts. They know not light because anyway where Christ does not reign, darkness reigns! We rarely think about this, or rather, we don't even know this happens somewhere in our very own country. People living in darkness, in chains of culture and traditions, yet we swim in ignorance of this.
Our selfish culture will tell us to "mind our own business" Yet people will be born and perish in darkness without the knowledge of Christ all their lives. Their poor souls are doomed to hell, yet we are the messengers of the good news, the light of the world meant to shine in the darkness.
Our prayer therefore should be; "Break our hearts for what breaks yours Lord, send us wherever you would want us to go and shine your light because that is our very purpose in life." So help us, Lord.

@NeemaG
#reachingtheunreached