What happens when you are robbed

Please know that this is not a personal testimony or you would have gotten a prayer request notice from me.

This occurred a few hundred yards behind our house on Tuesday night. I heard the aftermath - that's how I knew about it. In fact, my whole section of the city "heard" about it.

Around 1:30 in the morning, I heard moaning.

Pitiful moaning. Sad moaning. Heart-breaking moaning.

Then more moaning.

Then crying out.

It got closer and closer, like it was in my back yard.

Then it faded back again.

Then it sounded like it was in my side yard.

Then my front yard.

You get the picture.

It went on and on for over an hour.

If you want to know anything that happens around an African village or town at night - ask a night watchman.

Check.

Apparently, a lady returned from disco dancing to find everything in her house gone, including 300,000 shillings (about $150) she had earned from braiding women's hair.

Her mother and sisters have all died, and her father has moved in with her. He was there when the burglary happened.

He's blind.

This lady had the saddest moan I had ever heard. It was so repetitive that there was no more than 2 seconds of silence between each one. It was so sad.

She had been robbed just two weeks ago says the watchman, but I must have been out of town because I would have remembered that moan. I don't know how she had anything left to take, except money, but the robbers obviously knew her "night watchman" was blind and that she wasn't home, so she looked like an easy target.

The watchman said she came moaning down the hill behind my house, then turned around and went back to her house. She then returned behind my house, around my house, and down the road in front of my house.

The watchman said she walked past my house and gave her last worldly possessions (a cell phone and 1000 shillings (50 cents)) to a neighbor to hold, and she wondered off moaning into the night.

I don't know if she was going to moan her way all the way to the police station or just to the point where she got her sanity back.

I just want you to appreciate your local law enforcement. You can call them. They come to you. And you can moan in the privacy of your own home.

Theft is a terrible thing.

We can all be robbed so easily by the thief that wants all we are and have.

"The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy, but I have come that you may life and have it more abundantly." John 10:10