This weekend I travelled north a few hours to Kpalime and hiked up the tallest “mountain” in Togo, topping out at 3,234 feet. Along the hike there are several villages. We stopped at one to rest and could hear Sunday singing close by. Then my friend says, “Oh, here comes Jesus.” And I look, and there he is, on a little cross, coming up the stairs into view. “Oh, you’re not kidding,” I say as we watch a boy and then a whole procession of singing, palm-leaf-waving children come into view.
There is lots of Jesus here. He keeps surprising me at times when I am –like on our hike –just sitting there. On this boat, sometimes I find myself looking around and thinking, “what a strange boat this is; how crazy that all these people come and live on this boat; where did this ridiculous idea come from?” We have a whole village living on a ship. And if you aren't on the hospital deck or out with a field team you might be confused and wonder if maybe this is a long-distance ferry or a low-budget cruise ship stalled at port. But then you will see something, or hear a story that will strike you as if you were just sitting under a tree on a hillside and suddenly Jesus is there walking up the hill towards you.
The people I talk to here say things similar to how I feel: somewhat unsure about this big, strange ship, but certain that God has told them to come here. Yesterday a baby died on the boat. Some of the nurses knew her from Benin. She was tiny then and they were trying to get her feeding better. This year she came again and she was still too tiny and sickly. It is the second baby this mother has lost. She is four months pregnant now. Pray with us that this third baby will be healthy. We come here to heal and we had to watch a baby die. We had to give up and say, "Jesus, come and be a comforter." We have not been able to bring healing, but Jesus would you reveal yourself here, would you visit this mother and weep with her as we do. They are used to children dying here; it's nothing new. I find myself wondering if maybe it is a greater thing for this mother that a whole ship of people from foreign lands would mourn for her loss than it would be if we could have saved her child.
I remember another mother who brought her son. She had taken him to an orphanage because he had a cleft lip and the villagers told her he was cursed, that she shouldn't keep him. But she took him back and brought him here and by the time he was ready to go home she had decided to keep him. I would like to see Jesus here on this ship doing miraculous healings; he could have brought back the heart-beat of the baby that died. But perhaps it is of more lasting significance that a mother who gave up her son has fallen in love with him again, or that a woman who has lost two babies knows that there is a God who loves her and her lost children despite what the world seems to be saying.
So we live on this ship and we go about our work and trust that because God has called us all here that when we least expect, at any moment, we will find that Jesus has walked by and what we do in faith and blindness has been made holy and eternal.
No comments:
Post a Comment