Curious Misadventures & Orchestrated Opportunities

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Advent in Africa: When Anger Draws Love Close

I’m finding myself a bit unprepared for Christmas this year. We have less than two weeks before the celebration, and my usual organized lists of gifts to buy, cards to write, and people to see are not even written.

Truth be told, I was planning to celebrate Christmas in the States this year for the first time in 12 years, but for various reasons, I came back to West Africa early. I’ll confess to being a bit nostalgic for what could have been—Christmas with family, doing all the traditions—even while conscious of the fact that this year will be anything but traditional, given COVID. Nostalgia seems to be holding me back from fully engaging.

That risks painting a very one-sided picture though, because I really love Christmas in West Africa. In a culture where even small things are reason enough for a party, you can imagine the festivities around Christmas. And while so much of American Christmas centers around the stuff—the food, the presents, the decorations—West African Christmas is centered around friendships and community. (I’m speaking in generalities here, of course.)

After 12 years, I find myself adapted to the culture and traditions of the people I’ve committed those years to, so that my actual preferences for how Christmas be celebrated have been reworked, looking like some weird hybrid that would be fairly incomprehensible to an outside observer from either culture. Of course, this type of adaptation and melding into culture means taking the good (relationship-strengthening parties) with the bad (really long church services)!

That is the life my colleagues and I signed up for and not just at Christmas. We’ve gotten good at explaining this life to others (presumably because that’s how we get the bills paid!). You want to know the good parts of life? Here are the adventures I’ve had, the funny mishaps I laugh about, and the miracles I’ve witnessed! You want to know about the hard things? Here are the daily challenges that drive me nuts, the weird foods I’ve eaten, and the cultural oddities that enrage me.

The tricky thing is that the more I find myself melding into the culture—the more I identify with my hosts—the harder it is for me to relay the real highs and lows. For example, the time I celebrated Christmas with friends in another city and right before the meal was to be served, I was pulled aside to cut up tomatoes because far more people than expected had shown up. I missed the meal and had to eat a leftover plate with my friend’s little brother. But this was an absolute delight for me—I’d been treated exactly like family, not as the perpetual guest. For once, there were people that were more guest-y, more foreign, than me, my accent and skin color notwithstanding. Of course, I just put that into words, but this identification with another culture draws us near to joy and sadness that defy explanation at times. And the bearing of the individual and collective sorrow to which this life draws us into proximity is perhaps the hardest to verbalize to our American loved ones because living in one of the poorest countries of the world exposes the soul to extremes the like of which we only see in our movies, the ones we thankfully leave behind when we exit the theater.

This might sound like a request for a pat on the back or a round of applause for my altruism, but I assure you it is not. While some of my colleagues probably deserve that applause and more, if I could give you front-row seats to my attitudes, thoughts, and reactions in some of those moments of sorrow, you’d be less than impressed. This week was a good case-in-point.

Three of my closest pastor friends came to my house for a time of prayer and a Christmas lunch. A few of my colleagues and I had prepared gifts, which we gave them after lunch. We’d had a great time together over several hours, but as they prepared to leave, they began to share with me a variety of needs. Last year hadn’t been a great harvest in their area, and this year wasn’t much better. For communities of subsistence farmers, two bad harvests in a row mean incredibly hard times ahead. Not only were the pastors struggling personally, but their communities were turning to them to find a solution as well.

Calloused as it sounds, I couldn’t help but be annoyed. Here we’d just presented them with gifts, and they turn around and ask for something more. I wanted to protest the seeming ingratitude. After they were gone, I began to reflect on the source of my annoyance—my anger, really. While I’ve had plenty of moments where people really do reveal ingratitude as they ask for one more thing in the hopes of getting just a little more out of you, I was fairly sure that wasn’t the case here. These pastors were really, truly overwhelmed by the need and the sorrow around them. Instead of sitting in that sorrow with them, I was furiously calculating what it was they were asking of me. Thousands of dollars. My problem-solving brain was blowing up with the impossibilities, and it was just too much. Have I ever mentioned that sitting…well…in just about any emotion, but especially sorrow, isn’t my thing?

But I do like solutions, and I found one. Anger is a very useful emotion for creating distance and separation, and we employ it, often unconsciously, as a way to protect ourselves. (Not that I know anything about this…) The sorrow of having three friends tell me that their families and their communities are in for a season of food insecurity and me feeling unable to solve this was just too much. I needed distance, so I chose to be annoyed about fictional ingratitude instead of leaning into the relationship.

On this little stroll through Advent themes, I’ve been leaning on the minor prophets as guides. Last week I tried to explore how judgment might lead to true peace. I mentioned that our culture has a weird relationship with judgment based on our relationship to truth, but I neglected to say anything about the emotional aversion we have to judgment, especially God’s judgment, because of its association (in our minds more than in the actual Biblical text—thanks Bible Project guys!) with anger. While we all have various experiences with anger and tolerances for its expression, one thing is sure: when anger is used against us in an effort to put distance in a close relationship, it doesn’t feel good.

The minor prophets certainly talk about God’s anger, especially in relationship to the people closest to Him, the Israelites. In fact, this is a pattern we see throughout the Old Testament (again, thanks Bible Project), God gets angriest with the people He has most closely aligned Himself with. The first person God is described as being angry with? Moses. And that is AFTER the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

This pattern and our human experience of anger as an emotional tool of separation leave one expecting the minor prophets, with their imagery of judgment and God’s anger, to paint a very bleak picture of His love for Israel. Much to the contrary, the minor prophets hold God’s anger and His faithful love for Israel together. Micah is a great example of this. The book opens with an image of God trampling down the high places of earth and melting the mountains like wax. It closes with this verse: “He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love.” The only thing He tramples on, in the end, is “our iniquities.”

God doesn’t need to protect Himself from our sorrows by creating distance, even when those sorrows are completely our fault. In fact, the angrier God gets with the rot and devastation that have come to His Creation and His Covenant, the more He seems to lean into the relationship. He channels that anger to addressing the sorrows that affect us, including our sin, all while reaffirming His faithful (or covenant) love. Far from putting distance between us, His anger seems to create the conditions under which His love can draw us near.

Jesus will do this perfectly in His Second Coming. He will come to this earth in judgment, angry, even, at the ills that plague His good creation, but His whole aim is drawing closer to Himself those He loves. He will restore Creation so that we can live in uninterrupted, untarnished relationship with Him. Nostalgia for the garden has not held Him back from engaging fully in the mess we’ve made.

And lest we doubt this, His Incarnation and birth show decisively His intention. He became “God with us,” tasting our every sorrow and injustice. As He walked this earth, His anger burned most intensely against those who setup systems that kept people from Him. His crucifixion and death show that when it mattered most, He was ready to lean into sorrow and pain, in order that we might know His steadfast love.

“He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:19 (ESV)

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Advent in Africa: Stepping into Peace

I started the following in December 2016, with the intention of doing an Advent series. I found the unfinished draft while searching for another Advent document and decided to finish it this year (4 years...not bad). I hope to add 2 more posts this year. The first post in the series can be found here.

We humans, in general, have a strange relationship with weather. When it’s hot, we want it cold, and when it’s cold, we can only think about finding some place warm. Westerners living in West Africa during Christmas time have an especially strange relationship to hot and cold. We pay good money to cool down our houses, so that we can pretend it is cold outside. Don’t get us wrong, it isn’t exactly that we want your snow—well, if it could snow at 60-degrees, then maybe—we just want it to feel cool enough that we can pretend there is snow. So, we turn on the fans and the coolers, imagine snow falling outside, and light candles so we can feel warm on the inside. It’s a delicate balance; we are after something rather elusive.

I wonder if we’ve filled our Christmas imagination with images of snow and fire for reasons that go beyond strange nostalgia. Perhaps it is because in the experience of those elements we find a parallel to the sensation of peace, a sensation made the stronger for the sharp contrast between dark cold and glowing warmth. Certainly, staring into a fireplace or a lit candle on a cool night, watching the flames dance and flicker, brings a feeling of calm that evokes peace. And anyone who has ever come shivering into a home heated by a fireplace knows how you gravitate naturally to the hearth, peeling back the layers and laying aside the weight of damp coats and scarves, waiting while the heat washes over and then through you. There, basking in the crackling warmth, tense limbs relax, and for a tiny moment, all seems right.

Note the temperatures. Futile attempts at holiday peace.

There is a curious phrase that’s been rolling around on my mind these past few days. Did you ever have anyone tell you to, “Come in out of the cold!”? It’s a strange little phrase; one strong verb inviting, directing, commanding, with those three prepositions all lined up pointing out the way. It’s almost certainly a mom phrase—showing tender concern, and yet chiding the carelessness of staying out and exposed to the elements so long.

The minor prophets are not exactly what you would call “motherly” in tone. They seem a bit heavier on the chiding and the rebuke, and for this, one hardly thinks of them as containing a treasury of teaching on peace. Yet I’m finding in my readings a thread that reveals both tender concern and an invitation to true peace.

As with authentic Christian hope, true Christian peace has an abundance of counterfeits. This is why, for all their rough edges, we can thank the minor prophets for disabusing us of all counterfeit notions of peace. In Hosea, the Lord mocks Israel’s attempts to get peace by allying itself with Egypt and Assyria. In Amos, those who’ve gained wealth (by oppressing the poor) find that their finances cannot secure them. Edom’s natural advantages of living in mountain fortresses offers no long-term safety, Obadiah says. Jonah makes clear that running away from a task that you’d rather not do will only cause more trouble. Micah strips away the idea that ritual and religion can provide peace. They all roundly condemn idolatry, which might just find its very definition in the idea of seeking peace in something other than the God of the universe.

The minor prophets are writing in a time of empires. It’s a volatile time; each new king wanting to make a greater name for himself by furthering his conquests. Power changes hands with dizzying speed. Then come the Romans. They conquer further afield than any before them, and they rule with an iron fist. Eventually, they have the audacity to claim that they’ve brought about peace on earth—Pax Romana.

Into a world of Roman domination, into this supposed peace, the Prince of Peace is born. From the outset, His story is marked by a lack of peace—parents that must return hurriedly to an ancestral city for a census; their nighttime flight to Egypt to save His life from an egomaniacal king who, at the slightest perceived threat to his powers, orders babies killed; and even their eventual return, marked by needing to avoid the new king by settling in a town in the backwaters of the country. Every Christmas, we rehearse these events in readings, pageants, and nativities, and to our peril, our familiarity with them can reduce them to innocuous parts of some fairy tale, as nothing more than struggles our protagonist needs for character development.

Yet, when we look anew at this story, we see something shocking and unnerving, something we rarely associate with Christmas: this little baby, this innocent child comes wielding judgment, the very judgment of God. By His very life circumstances, before He ever preaches a word, He calls up short the most powerful kingdom of this world. They claim to have instituted peace on earth, but when true innocence and goodness comes into the world in the form of a baby, it is met with oppression and terror. The religious establishment fairs no better. Charged with guiding their community in paths of peace, religious leaders are so busy placating the power systems that they totally neglect the arrival of their true source of both power and peace. Apart from a few expensive gifts, brought—it must be pointed out—by mystics of another religion and ethnicity, Jesus had no wealth on which to rely for personal and familial peace, let alone the kind of wealth needed to gain influence in broader society.

Like the minor prophets, baby Jesus disabuses us of our false notions of what provides peace. This world’s power structures, wealth-generation machinery, and religious systems all have the vicious habit of getting ahead by crushing and excluding the most vulnerable. We all cry out in exasperation, “God where are you?” whenever we find ourselves being stepped on, but when we find ourselves on the winning side of one of those systems, we have the very unfortunate inclination to go along, basking in the peace of the moment, and pretending those who are excluded have just obstinately chosen not to participate, likely due to immorality or a personal character flaw. And yet, the testimony of Jesus persists stubbornly, calling all of us up short and denouncing the hollowness of our supposed peace. Baby Jesus, contrary to all the cuteness and blandness our annual celebrations have tried to bestow on Him, is, in a word, very judge-y.

Our culture has a strange relationship with judgment. We’ve come through a couple decades were the very strong message was, “Don’t judge!” because, after all, there is no absolute standard by which to judge. So, don’t judge my sexual ethics and lifestyle choices, and don’t judge the way I use my money or my unspoken biases. If we all just went along with this “say nothing” approach, we assumed, peace would be the result. This ethos is still around and is quickly brandished as a retort to any evaluation of ourselves we don’t particularly like, but in recent years, we’ve abandoned the hope of “all getting along,” and have realized that the postmodern lack of any clear boundary markers was untenable. Here, we’ve grouped into tribes that define our absolute values and now have license to judge, humiliate, and cancel anyone not holding to our dogma. At least, we think, we can have peace within our group. Except, those groups seem to be getting smaller and smaller because the legalistic demands of membership are so stringent that it is easy to run afoul of our own tribal identity. Today’s canceler soon becomes the canceled, and the effort necessary to keep up with ever-shifting dogmatic beliefs is anything but peaceful.

To those who hope God’s standard is “anything goes,” Jesus says, on the day of judgment everyone will be accountable even for their careless words (Matt 12:36). To our cancel-culture, Jesus warns that the standard we apply to others will be applied to us (Matt 7). There are no truly innocent people in our world, and the sword of Christ’s judgment cuts a line that runs through each of us.

But to all of us, the testimony of Jesus and the prophets is resoundingly clear, even if completely counter-intuitive: God’s judgment is good news!! In the face of evil and oppression, God is not apathetic or resigned. He cares deeply that the systems of this world crush underfoot the vulnerable. And in response to our constant idolatry, in other words, our constant quest to find peace outside of Him, we see God as jealously protective of what rightfully belongs to Him. He does not sit idly by while evil power holds our hearts captive, making us complicit in the greater evil of this world. As antidote to our whiplashed culture, His standards of judgment are absolute (knowable), universal (applied to all), and unchanging (not beholden to the zeitgeist du jour).

The minor prophets and Jesus make one final and critical thing clear: God’s judgment is always accompanied by His redemptive grace. Yes, like a mother, He chides and rebukes, for He must—we often forget how dangerous being out in the elements can be—but inherent in this correction is a warm invitation to be transformed, to be warmed through by His love. He judges and delivers, condemns and pardons, burns with anger and loves intensely. The fire of His judgment proves more purifying than destructive for those who will accept it. He calls us to the hearth of His love but must insist that we strip away the wet coats and mittens so that the warmth can penetrate deep within.

And THIS is peace. True peace.

This Christmas (2020) in West Africa, all illusions of false peace have been stripped away by war, famine, and pandemic, and worldwide some of the same forces are making the “peace” of holiday cheer ring hollow as well. What a wonderful opportunity to remember the truth about peace.

True peace is never found without both judgment and deliverance. True peace is found when we both heed the rebuke of our folly for dabbling in this world’s elements and accept the invitation to come in out of the cold. We must actively step into peace.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Christian Grit

(aka Christian Courage and Christian Subversion rehashed… read at your own repetitive peril.)

Over the past five years, I’ve had lots of impetus to grapple with the meaning of Christian courage, grit, and determination. [And let’s make it clear from the outset that the only reason one has to grapple with the meaning of these words is because one finds himself confronted by a situation which leaves him feeling the lack of said values. If it all just came naturally, I’d never need to give it a second thought.]

This week, an image of determination has come back to mind. In high school, my dad made a spirited attempt to renew my interest in carpentry. We had gotten a new dog some months before, a mutt with strong beagle tendencies, and while still a puppy, we noticed that she had a real knack for hunting.

One night, while working in the garage, we heard her hunting bark right outside. My dad looked up in alarm, knowing that at that time of night, she’d cornered either a skunk or a raccoon, neither of which is suitable prey for a puppy.

He grabbed a big wooden mallet, I a flashlight, and together we went to investigate. Sure enough, we found Sheba locked in battle with a raccoon that was roughly her size. She’d learned to hunt from the older, more experienced beagle next door, who was training her into his own personal mercenary for small woodland creatures. But he was nowhere to be found, and there was serious question as to whether Sheba had the strength and skill to take on this raccoon.

We edged in closer, both fascinated and afraid. Calling her off a kill, once in this mode, was futile. So my dad worked around to the side of the fight, within striking distance. A good hunting dog will lunge in at the animal and then recoil before the prey can strike back, doing this multiple times until it can exploit a weakness or simply tires the animal out. Sheba did this with a grace and skill that come from instinct.

Timing her lunges and recoils, my dad swung down with the mallet, hoping to end the fight in favor of Sheba. But just as he swung, Sheba made a premature lunge forward, taking the full blow of the mallet on her head. She yelped and staggered back, dizzy from the blow. Dad and I gasped, sure that we’d just incapacitated our new puppy. In the seconds that followed, two things happened. First, the raccoon relaxed, sensing the dog’s set-back. Secondly, however, Sheba regained her composure, sensed the raccoon’s lowered defenses, and lunged back in for the death grab.

This might be mildly distasteful, given the subject matter, but when you watch an animal live up to all the potential of its breeding, skill, and training, it truly is a beautiful thing. No thanks to us, Sheba trotted off that evening, prey in mouth, head held high in victory.

Grit. Determination. This is why you can use beagles to hunt bears.

More often than we’d like, this is a fairly accurate description of living on mission. We are engaged in a struggle to accomplish what we think will produce gains for the Kingdom, and in the middle of the fight, right when we are giving it all we’ve got, out of nowhere we get clubbed over the head. I suppose it is what happens as we stagger back, dizzy from the blow, that really determines the victory.

I’ve been reading Acts lately in my morning meditations. I’ve been struck by the early church’s response to persecution. They could rightly have lamented the loss of the “easy” days, when Peter was preaching publicly, and masses were coming to Christ. Then comes the blow. They are forced to respond, to change up the strategy. Yet, they don’t get lost in lament; they plunge right back in, with different methods and at greater risk. At the end of chapter 5, we see them change from preaching to the masses in public, instead taking the ministry into homes, while still meeting in the temple. In chapter 6, we see Stephen working in the synagogue. After his death, we see a widening of persecution, which pushes the church further afield. Philip goes into Samaria, uncharted territory for the church at this point. In all of this, we see the same pattern: recoiling from the blow, only to push back in to do the same things with slightly different techniques.

This week our team received a blow that sent us back reeling. A very clear and personal security menace has upset our apple cart. Not that there is a convenient time for such things, but this one feels particularly badly timed. Our team has just reached the height of its projected growth. New families have moved in, are getting settled, and finding their rhythm. We’ve been able to strengthen the hospital’s capacity with new doctors. Our outreach into surrounding villages was just kicking off, and we sensed the Lord very much at work.

Then, this.

All of that growth, all of the work to create a healthy team, all the coordination and communication needed to get projects going, and here we are at risk of losing it all. Why now? Why this blow? We knew that we likely had only a small window of time to work in, but this has cut us short.

A couple weeks ago, I felt the need to start reading Bonhoeffer’s writings again. I’m convinced we are living in an era, both here in West Africa and in the United States, where we need Bonhoeffer’s courage and grit, a Bonhoeffer-esque clarity of conviction, and his willingness to prophetically condemn what lacks in the church, while still seeking its unity. This morning, in his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” I read the following:

“The situation in itself—that is each single moment—is perhaps not so very different here from anywhere else; I read, meditate, write, pace up and down my cell… The great thing is to stick to what one still has and can do—there is still plenty left—and not to be dominated by the thought of what one cannot do, and by feelings of resentment and discontent. I’m sure I never realized as clearly as I do here what the Bible and Luther mean by ‘temptation’. Quite suddenly, and for no apparent physical or psychological reason, the peace and composure that were supporting one are jarred, and the heart becomes, in Jeremiah’s expressive phrase, ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?’ It feels like an invasion from outside, as if by evil powers trying to rob one of what is most vital.”

In the reassessment of our current reality, we will need to decide what we can do, and not focus on what we cannot do. We’ll need to guard our hearts, refusing to be robbed of peace and composure.

To be sure, there is another image that we often confuse with determination, and that is defiance. To keep with my animal metaphors and to return to my recent donkey imagery, let me explain the difference with this little insight from West Africa. Donkeys love, for whatever strange reason, to stand in the middle of the highways here. And they simply do not move. I’ve seen donkeys grazed by cars passing at 40 miles per hour, and instead of running off the road in pain or fear, they remain exactly where they were, standing defiantly, as if to say, “Is that the best you’ve got? I’ve had better.”

To be sure, stubborn defiance is not the same as Christian grit. We are not called to the stupid, reflection-less response of donkeys to our blows. Often such defiance manifests because we are too afraid to change out of our normal routine. Other times, we lock ourselves into the same-old pattern because we assume holding ground is synonymous with victory and lack the reflection to change up our strategy. Neither motivation will achieve victory, and both risk getting us run over.

Back in Acts 4, right after the disciples have been arrested and questioned by the Sanhedrin for the first time, they gather together for prayer. In this beautiful and compelling prayer, they acknowledge how things are still stacked against them—Pilate and Herod are still in power at this time, leading the nations in revolt against the cause of Christ. Yet, in so doing, they have unwittingly accomplished the very will of God. So, the disciples pray, “Take consideration of their threats and enable your servants to speak with great boldness.” They go on to ask for an empowering of the Holy Spirit to accomplish miracles in their ministry.

This is Christian grit. Resting in a God who can use even the blows to accomplish His purposes, we say, “Look at these threats Lord!” but also, “Empower us!”

We’ve staggered back from the blow. Perhaps the recovery from the set back is how God shows off the fullness of what He has breed and trained us to be. Perhaps He delights in hunting bears with beagles.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

January Update

Humble Lord of the Universe

This morning I was reading in Luke’s Gospel—rereading for the 100^th time, is more accurate--the triumphal entry story, and I was startled to see it in a new light. Who knew that having donkeys as everyday life companions could alter your understanding of scripture?

I had pretty much understood that Jesus choosing to ride a donkey into Jerusalem was a sign of humility. Certainly, Matthew’s account of the story makes this explicit by quoting Zechariah’s prophecy, which talks about the King coming humbly, riding on a donkey.

Here in West Africa, the donkey is the preferred beast of burden. There is nothing fancy about riding a donkey cart around. It’s commonplace, and trust me, anything but glorious. I’m sure in Jesus’ day, it was much the same. No Caesar would have been caught dead riding a donkey. A horse, yes; a camel or an elephant maybe, but not a donkey.

Jesus, however, did not need those external trappings to proclaim His Kingship. Surround by a group of peasants and villagers, riding on a donkey, He descends into Jerusalem, not to be crowned as King in the normal way, but to suffer death. Humble. Sure. Determined.

This is precisely where we see a most incredible irony. Jesus wasn’t to be crowned as King of Jerusalem or Israel with all the earthly celebrations befitting of such an occasion, but He was about to be crowned Lord of the whole world, in the most unthinkable and surprising of ways.

And only ONE character in the story gets that.

Donkeys are not intelligent. Excuse the language, but there are good reasons we use the term “dumb ass” as an insult and “smart ass” as a derision of someone who thinks he is being clever. The lack of intelligence is compounded by a difficult temperament. West Africans use donkey-pulled carts to do just about everything, with the careful exception of anything that needs a little honor. So, for example, they’ll never allow a donkey cart to carry a coffin. Donkeys, they say, are without pity, even for the dead, and would likely do something stupid, causing the casket to tip and provoking grave dishonor for the family of the deceased.

Jesus chooses not only a donkey, but the colt of a donkey that has never been ridden. An UNBROKEN donkey. Surrounded by people yelling and cheering. I promise, this is a recipe for disaster. And yet, there is no record of donkey shenanigans on that day. Apparently that unbroken colt knew he was in the presence of greatness.

The religious leaders ask Jesus to rebuke His followers for the way they are praising Him. He responds that the rocks will cry out if His admirers go silent.

The rocks never got their chance that day, but the dumb ass performs marvelously, accepting the weight of the Lord of the Universe, perhaps knowing the fate that awaited Him in Jerusalem. Maybe donkeys are capable of pity after all.

How about us? Perhaps we are hoping for the Presence of Christ to invade our lives with the grandeur of an elephant riding king, and yet all we find is this humble man, surrounded by commonness, making Himself entirely available to us. Our Savoir is humble; He never parades Himself into our lives, our situations, our time, or our problems with an air of importance. Yet, when we invite Him in, we are receiving the very Lord of the Universe, whose power even the rocks recognize, whose importance even a donkey respects.

Update in Pictures

At the hospital, I continue to be active in wound care, helping to guide the care for some of our most difficult chronic cases. Doing the actual hands-on care of a nurse was something I had really missed, and I’m happy to have an outlet for that again.

I also continue to serve as the main liaison between our team (including our donors) and the hospital administration. We recently finished a solar project funded by USAID that will make the hospital almost completely energy independent. While the real work of this project was done by our Dutch colleague, I’ve be very involved in the financial aspects of the project. It was fun to see the completion.

Christmas and New Year’s proved to be very busy, but fun times. I had a house full of friends Christmas eve night, and then after church service we had almost 25 people over to eat lunch. Most of these are friends that are new believers and so don’t have a family to celebrate with.

On New Year’s Eve, I took a group of friends a few hours south of our city to a waterfall. We had a blast hiking around and talking. At one point, we were scrambling down a hill to get to the top of the falls, and I jumped down onto a rock slab a couple feet below me, only to realize that I had landed next to an 8-foot-long python. I didn’t know this was possible, but happily, he was more afraid of me than I was of him, and he took off down the hill without giving me a second look. When we regained composure, we finished off the hike to the top of the falls and had a great conversation about what God was calling us to in 2017.

We continue to work closely with our national church partners in reaching new villages. We’ve been especially focused on helping Pastor Daniel (Top) get settled into the village of Kougnou. The small group of believers they have there meets under a shade constructed with sticks and millet stalks (middle). Daniel and his family were living in a room that another family was allowing them to borrow, and the situation was far from ideal. So, this week, the district sent a team of men to build the walls of a new house (above), which will also include a large porch area for church meetings. They are building the house by day and doing Gospel presentations in the evening.

Prayer Requests:

1. Praise the Lord for the forward progress (such as the solar project, the training of nursing leadership) being made at the hospital. Continue to uphold our doctors and nurses in prayer, as they often receive challenging cases.

2. Continue to pray for a young friend Djakari, who continues to struggle with spiritual warfare. He has been gaining some victory lately, but the battle is still intense.

3. Praise the Lord for a good start to the outreach season. My colleague, Toby, and I have had some really encouraging visits in key villages all over our target area during these past couple weeks. There is much to be done in order to see the Kingdom come fully in these areas. Pray that the Holy Spirit would go before us and lead us to where He is working.

4. The busyness of this season always leaves me feeling pulled in multiple directions. Pray that I would manage my time well and would have the strength to do my job well.

5. Praise the Lord that all our new teammates are now here. Pray for their continued adjustment and language study. Pray that as a team we can continue to grow and function well together.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Advent in Africa: Hope in the Dark

I made a decision a few years back to only decorate for Christmas in intentionally symbolic ways, not for the sake of beauty or for stirring up nostalgic feelings. This was, of course, an easy decision given the paucity of my decorating skill and the fact that nostalgic feelings are hard to stir when you are away from family, snow, and piles of presents by the fireplace. So, I’ve invested meaning in my tree and lights, in the nativity scene, and in the candles I’ve spread all throughout the living room. (And yeah, that’s pretty much all I got…) If you ask me, I can tell you why each of these things represents some aspect of peace and joy or hope and salvation. To the skeptic, I grant that my symbolism is based more on a Naria-esque make-believe allegory than on the actual meanings of these historical traditions, but I’m just postmodern enough not to care. And besides, I have to have some way to explain them to my friends…

You're looking at the entirety of my Christmas decor...

So there I am, sitting in the dark, looking at the Christmas tree. It is just about perfect, even if I have had to cram the thing into a corner, having only enough lights to cover two-thirds of the tree. I snuffed the candles out half an hour ago, but the scent of vanilla and fake apple pie hangs in the air. The evaporative cooler is working hard to bring the temperature of the living room down below 80, and it is just nice enough that I’m thinking that if I had a fan blowing right on me, I could probably get under a light blanket.

“A.” comes in and lays down the couch, facing the Christmas tree. It’s not his first time seeing a Christmas tree, but it is his first time living in a house where someone sits in the dark looking at tiny lights, while pretending it’s cold. How do I go about explaining to someone with no reference for this kind of thing that he is likely to find me this way quite often over the next month? In a world where people worship idols made of stuff much less glorious than my plastic tree, how do I help him understand that I’m not worshiping the tree, all appearances to the contrary?

So I take a stab at explaining some symbolism to him. “Once upon a time, trees were lit with candles, but then we started making them out of plastic, and well, plastic and open flame and fire code being what they are, we switched to small lights. So back to candles…a candle gives light in the dark and provides just enough light to see a bit. Hope is like that—just enough light to see. So that’s why I sit here in front of the tree looking at tiny lights. It makes me hopeful.” Suffice it to say, that went well. When a few silent moments later, he says, “Well, it is pretty,” I take that to mean that he’s really grasped the full symbolic link between Christmas lights and robust Christian hope.

I give up on my attempts to explain symbolism, and we slip back into silent tree worship. Many minutes later, I pepper A. with the usual questions: How’s work been? Is his dad’s last angry tirade still discouraging him? Where does he see God at work? I get, mostly, the usual answers: Not much work to be had these days. He’s not discouraged, but not particularly encouraged with life in general. Doesn’t know how to answer the God question.

At this, we sink back into silence, and I leave behind my glib reflections on Christmas symbolism and my gentle self-mocking for confusing A. with my traditions. My thoughts go serious, and I’m left with tough questions. What does hope look for someone like A.? He works hard as an apprentice to a mechanic, and he wants to learn more, but they simply don’t find enough work in the day to keep them busy and well paid. His father refuses to believe that A. makes no money and regularly insults him. How does hope lead him forward, when it appears the odds, and his family, are stacked against him?

What does hope look like for these guys?

Many moments later, A. pierces my silent thoughts with this statement, “You know, before you started praying for me every day, I really didn’t even know how to pray.” He offers no more explanation. I offer a few cursory thoughts on the personal nature of Christian prayer and relationship to God, and then shortly thereafter, I turn out the Christmas lights and head to bed.

This Christmas season, I’m reading through the minor prophets. It’s really uplifting stuff; you should try it. Actually, I started because to hear NT Wright talk about the minor prophets, they are all pierced through with glorious beams of hopeful expectation. I won’t say I feel lied to, but I’ve been finding them a stiff drink of darkness and despair, with the rare nugget of hopeful longing. They do look the evil and darkness of the world right in the face, though—the personal evils of sexual immorality, idolatry, and hatred, as well as the societal evils of war, oppression of the poor, and lack of defense for the helpless. The solutions they propose, however, don’t seem to be a match for the darkness.

In Joel, for example, the shining high note is this promise of God pouring out His Spirit and making prophets of all sorts of people. I can’t help but wonder, did Joel, a prophet himself, ever want to say, “We prophets have been prophesying for a long time. The problem isn’t lack of prophets; the problem is that people aren’t listening.” Maybe the minor prophets understood hope better than I do, but I think at times I would have needed to say to God, “The hope you are offering isn’t enough in the face of this darkness.”

Have you ever been completely swallowed by darkness? On moonless nights here in West Africa, this can happen easily, but the first time I ever remember this happening to me was on a drive from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. A friend and I were driving back from a conference and had decided to drive through the night. I was working lots of night shifts at the time, so keeping myself awake wasn’t a problem, but when we hit the Nevada desert with no other cars on the road and no light to be had for miles around, it felt as if we’d been completely consumed. Even the hi-beams on the car didn’t seem to do anything but give us a few feet of sight in front of the car. I remember there was a stretch of several miles in which I couldn’t tell whether we were going uphill or downhill because my perspective of our surroundings was so confused. Our lights were just not sufficient for the immensity of the darkness.

I suppose coming to grips with the immensity of the darkness is the first step in understanding what true hope really is. We live with a lot of false hope in our world these days. Inside the safety of our suburban homes, with our trees, fires, and piles of presents, we stir up feelings of hope because everything is going pretty much the way we’d like. This is weak hope that doesn’t stand up to any serious challenge from the dark. It’s the belief in Santa that never makes it out of childhood. We need to recover a hope that shines stubbornly on despite the crushing presence of evil. As long as we hide ourselves from the reality of the evil in our world, we live with this weak hope and are susceptible to being crushed under the weight of the next wave of darkness that catches us by surprise.

What does real hope look like in the face of incurable disease? In the face of systemic poverty? In the face of terrorism? In the face of a world that seems to be punishing instead of helping its most vulnerable? What does real hope have to say to my own darkness? To the voices of self-critique that suggest that I’m never doing enough? To my own propensity to quarrel and fight, instead of making peace? To my tendency to stray from the Lord for things I already know offer no satisfaction?

The minor prophets never provide a complete explanation for their hope. Instead, they illuminate the next step—return immediately to the Lord--and they plant the idea that somewhere out there in the darkness the Lord is up to something that will be a game changer. The reader is left wondering if this is enough. Can this hold? Can it resist the tide of darkness?

Even on the other side of the nativity, the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection, I’m bad at hope. This advent season though, I want to struggle with this mystery of hope. I want my instinct, when staring out into the dark, to drive me back to the Lord and wait as somewhere out there, He sets in motion a transformation, a heavenly invasion of earth. I want to march all the more boldly into the darkness, holding up a candle of hope. I’ll wonder if it is enough, but I’ll keep marching.

After all, headlights in the Nevada desert dark seem so insufficient, and yet they lead you home.

Maybe learning to pray to a personal God is enough to lead us home. Maybe a world full of Spirit-filled prophets is just the army of candle-wielding protesters needed to bring down the walls of injustice. Maybe an innocent baby really is able to best the monsters of this world.

Prayer Requests

1. Pray for A. as he learns to pray. Ask the Lord to speak to his heart this Christmas season.

2. Pray for a friend Djakari, a new Christian, who has been having disturbing nighttime visitors that are threatening to harm him. Pray he’d find victory in Christ.

3. Pray for the many patients we have in our chronic wound clinic who seem to be making no, or infinitesimally small, progress in healing. Pray that we can inspire them with hope and find solutions to their problems.

4. Pray for the variety of outreaches that will happen during the month of December. Pray also that we can use it as a time to encourage national pastors in their work and ministry.

5. Pray for a young man named Enoc who works at the hospital, as he is having some mental health issues.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

On Setbacks in the Victorious Kingdom

Two sandal-clad feet swing out of the opened car door. They slide to the red, dusty ground, flattening under a new weight as the long frame of a young man steps out of the car. The sun beats down on the dry landscape, creating a wall of heat, sharply contrasted by the air-conditioned interior of the car. Ahead are mudbrick walls, corn-stalk shades, and the sounds of village life. Those feet carry the young man village-ward. The kids notice him first; their eyes are always more attuned to miracles. Soon, however, adults begin to emerge from their courtyards asking one another if it is really—could it be—the same Amadou that left here paralyzed? The effect snowballs and soon the village is reeling under the effects of astonishment. It’s a scene I’ve rehearsed many times in my mind.

Photo Credit: the very talented Ryan Kolacinski from Crosspoint Church, WI

That was the dream, but we’ve suffered a setback.

When I first met Amadou, he scooted out from the inside of his mud hut on a small stool. His teenage body, instead of filling out with strength, was wasting away. It was as if somehow all the muscle on his trunk, upper arms, and upper legs had been removed, leaving only bone and skin. Even simple movements required enormous effort and strange contortions.

He came to the hospital for a battery of tests, and an initial diagnosis was suggested. We began treatment, and the first glimmers of hope shown through as he began to make infinitesimal gains. Emboldened by this progress, we brought him to live at the hospital so that we could begin physical therapy. And, slowly he gained weight and strength. He was far from walking himself back into the village, but at least it was movement in that direction.

There is another current to this story. Amadou had become a Jesus follower while living at the hospital and had even started learning to read. He eventually “graduated” from reading class and earned his Bible. These days, he can be found wheeling himself to quiet corners of pediatrics in order to be alone and read the Word. He is the very first Jesus follower from his village—a place reputed for hardened hearts that have rejected every attempt at proclaiming the Kingdom.

So, you can understand my dream. Here this young man, who was so visibly sick, becomes a disciple of Jesus, the very first from his village. If he goes walking back into that village, the walls of resistance will fall down and the Kingdom will take a massive step forward.

But like I said, we’ve suffered a setback.

After months of plateaued performance, and frankly, regressions we didn’t want to admit, we finally received the results of a biopsy we had done. The results? Muscular dystrophy. The medical hopes of seeing him walk again are crushed. We can do no more than hopefully slow the regression as he weakens slowly toward death.

What do we make of these death-blows to hope? The emotional loss is difficult enough as you look forward to a bad outcome for someone you’ve grown to love and care about. Yet, the problems grow in degrees when you’ve tied your hopes to faith. Questions about God’s goodness and willingness to intervene make the loss even more thorny. What you had envisioned as a way forward for the Kingdom has suddenly become barred off, and you are left to wonder why you believed and hoped and mustered your faith in the first place.

Lately, in a Bible study with friends, we’ve been reading through the book of Daniel. It has left me pondering the Kingdom of God and all its significance for our lives. The first chapter leaves the reader reeling with the despair that Daniel must have felt. He looks on as a foreign king invades Jerusalem, enters the temple (the very place where God was present and active in Israel), and hauls off all the treasure he can find. To make matters worse, this pagan king installs all this booty in the temple of his own god. The message is clear: his god has won.

Without so much as a pause for breath, a moment to recover some hope, Daniel finds himself carted off to a foreign city to serve as a slave for this pagan king. The text gives strong indication that as the king’s slave, Daniel was castrated. To top things off, Daniel’s name is changed to a name that honors the pagan god of this oppressing king.

Yet, like a warrior who’s been thoroughly beaten, lying bloodied on the ground, yet inexplicably pulls himself back up, we see Daniel reach deep for courage. He risks his own life to decline the rich food coming from the king’s table out of preference for vegetables and water—an act of resistance that seems so futile and pointless, one wonders why Daniel would bother.

This is the pattern of Daniel’s story. Immersed in the crushing presence of a pagan empire, Daniel is playing by the rules of another Kingdom altogether. In small acts of subversion, he stands out as an example of courage and faith that even the kings are forced to recognize. God blesses Daniel and uses him to further advance His plans. All along the story, we catch a vision of the coming Kingdom, which smashes all the mighty kingdoms of the world. It endures eternally and fills the whole earth like a mighty mountain.

It is precisely this victorious vision of the Kingdom of God that feels so discordant when faced with setbacks. How does a Kingdom that rises to fill the whole earth abide defeat? What of us, citizens of this Kingdom, who live there by faith? How do we continue on in the face of such seemingly solid proof that we’ve hoped in a farce? Why will God simply not change the circumstances, perform the miracle, show up in undeniable power, when to us, it seems so strategic?

I’m writing this precisely because I have no idea. I don’t write as unbelieving cynic; I wouldn’t have even taken the time. No, I write as a puzzled, desperate believer who wants nothing more than to see the Kingdom expand and to whom these setbacks don’t seem to make any sense given what I know of the radical power and love available to us in this Kingdom.

Family squabbles being what they are, there are always plenty of signs pointing the way forward. There is an old familiar love that reassures despite present miscomprehensions. Here I see three worth noting:

1. Setbacks in the victorious Kingdom call me back to simplicity. While I get distracted and get busy planning all the messy details of an empire, Jesus laid out a very simple mandate for me within His Kingdom: love. Am I loving God with all that I have? Is that translating naturally into a self-giving love for others? Can we admit that in planning empire advancement in the face of challenging circumstances, we often get distracted from loving the people who are most affected by those circumstances?

2. Setbacks confirm that the Kingdom is for everyone, not just the able bodied, the strong, the successful, the majority. Daniel saw the Kingdom coming and smashing all other empires at precisely the moment of Roman dominance. Rome lived with the delusion that they’d brought about peace on earth. While things were great if you were a strong, intelligent, able-bodied, rich Roman, this was only maintained by oppressing, often times violently, anyone who didn’t fit those categories. Jesus’ Kingdom isn’t predicated on this “inclusion of the fittest only” principle. The very initiator of the Kingdom died a shameful, weak, and painful death. He won by losing. There is hope for everyone within the Kingdom to belong, to be loved, and to be restored because this has never been the strong-man’s game.

3. Setbacks thicken the plot. Jesus lay in the grave, and all reason for belief seemed lost. Yet, His was a surprise ending. The Kingdom is eternal. It weathers every storm, absorbs every blow, and keeps on growing. The end of the story is never fully written, and there is always room for redemption. The whole narrative of the Kingdom, and every story of those living for the Kingdom, calls us to persevere in faith.

So faith, hope, and love remain…

PRAYER REQUESTS

1. Pray for Amadou. Pray that God would miraculously heal him. Also, pray that he would continue to grow in his faith.

2. Pray for Pierre, another patient (good friends with Amadou) who has a chronic bone infection. Despite several surgeries, we can’t seem to fully treat the issue. Pray for him as he deals with a lot of pain. Pray also for his young faith.

3. Pray for our team as we meet to discuss how to better organize ourselves in order to tackle our strategic goals while also maintaining a real thread of team unity.

4. Continue to pray for young friends of mine who are working through all the implications of what it means to follow Jesus: Bakary, Yacou, and Amadou.

5. The season of outreach is upon us. Please be praying for the Holy Spirit to go ahead of us into villages and lives with whom we’ll have contact.

6. Pray for the pastor in the village of Kougnou. Land was just purchased for a church. Starting a new work like this is not easy, and he’s met with some resistance. Pray that he and his wife would be a shining light.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Pictures of the month-- October 20, 2016

This is a good look at my porch in the late afternoon (a good number days of the week). Friends gathered to hang out and discuss; tea being heated on the charcoal.

While we wait for the tea to be ready, conversation abounds. Here, Issa holds another friend's daughter. While our discussions range from everything to politics, to the latest news, to funny events, Issa does a great job of steering conversation toward the deeper things of life. As we discuss these things, I'm always amazed at how open the guys are to hearing what the Bible has to say on the topic.

It's the season of Custard Apples. There are a number of these trees in my yard. Issa's been on a mission this year to harvest them before the birds get them this year. So we ate several while hanging out.

The inside is a little bizarre looking, but the taste is incredible.

Djakari finishes preparing the tea by pouring it multiple times to create the white foam on top. (A sign of just how much sugar there is in this stuff.)

Served into glasses for all to share. The three rounds of tea mark out the time and keep the conversation moving forward.

Prayer Requests:

1. Pray for our team. We've added several new people in the past couple months. This is a wonderful thing. Pray that we can help these teammates adjust well, find houses, get necessary paperwork for vehicles, etc. Pray that our team would be cohesive, and there'd be good synergy in our ministry.

2. Pray for various teammates who've had health concerns. Pray for healing.

3. Our visitor season has arrived. We'll soon have many teams coming in. Pray that the Lord would bless each of these visits, protect our visitors, and advance His Kingdom through their visits. Pray that our team would have the energy and stamina to receive them well.

4. Pray for friends Amadou and Bakary who have really been investigating the truth of Christ. Pray that the Holy Spirit would work powerfully in their hearts.

5. Pray for the security here. There have been an increase in attacks in the north. We are praying that the Lord would spare us here in the south and leave the door open for our work.

6. Pray for staff at the hospital. This is a busy season, and there have been some expressions of discouragement. Pray that we'd have wisdom in how we respond. Pray for national leaders among the staff to have the patience and wisdom to respond well.