Last Friday evening, I sat at the bedside of a woman who recently lost her home in a fire. Claudia is just one of 2,000 residents of Rio das Pedras who were left homeless when a fire consumed the favella in Rio de Janeiro in August 2006. For now, Claudia lives with her husband and four children in a room a little smaller than my bedroom in a temporary shelter constructed by IMB disaster relief funds.

I sat at Claudia’s side that night as she nursed her six-month old daughter and explained, with tears running down her cheeks, how she had lost everything she owned. It wasn’t until I asked her how this tragedy had affected her view of God, that I began to feel a lump rise up in my throat. She began by saying that it was hard for her to understand why God would allow something like this to happen to her family when they were already poor. I don’t think I’ve ever broken down in an interview before, but what caused the tears to stream down my own cheeks was what she said next.

“The Bible study we have is a strength for us, especially because of everything that’s happened,” Claudia explained, “but I’m living in a different reality.”

As I sat on the bed and looked around the small room, I was struck by how vastly different her reality is from my own.

Just a few days earlier, I met a young boy living in Cidade de Deus. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old. When he approached me with a pen and piece of paper with a list of colors written out in English, I was struck by his initiative and his desire to learn.

Sadly, his reality is typified by the gunshots he hears on the streets of his neighborhood at night when the “trafficantes” or drug dealers face off against the police.

I don’t pretend to understand the problem of pain in the world, and I’d be lying if I told you I could somehow relate to these people. I feel like God is continually sobering me with experiences like these, and even though I may never understand the “whys” of this world, I just hope He will somehow use my life to make a difference.