Who hasn't been touched by evil in this life?

All of the women in the fistula ward have one obvious thing in common.   They have no children with them.  In a place where most women are carrying small children on their backs or trailing beside them, it is obvious when that is missing for a woman of a certain age.  These women lie in beds alone, as a catheter hangs below them into a bright beach bucket under the bed.  They are a few limbs and a docile, slightly grinning dark face in a pile of brightly patterned fabric—skirts and sheets. 

 

The child they spent nine months hoping for, expecting joyfully, has died in obstructed labor.  A difficult labor that left their body damaged.  Their husband has divorced them.  They leak urine.  Some leak stool.  They have been lied to, told that this curse has come upon them because they were not as good a mother as their own---lazy, unable to push as they should, inadequate, not a real woman.  They are rejected, degraded, despised, poor.  They are controlled by these feelings.  They begin to believe that they are a death machine, a cursed creature, killing all things they touch, even themselves….. They believe that they are cursed. And they believe this because they have been touched by evil.  

They are poor, and they are blessed because they see the redemption of Christ.

The Lord mourns with them.  Even today He does. 

And I know He does because I see him redeeming it, healing it, making these women new women.  Repairing their bodies, healing their souls, restoring their hearts. 

 

And He’s using Dr. Frank to do this.  He’s using Harriet and Goret.  He’s using St Peters, me and Lisa, you.  He’s using you.

 

He uses Dr. Frank when he opens up their bodies to repair the fistula.  He’s using Harriet the nurse in the ward, when she explains what fistula is, when she finally tells them that they are not cursed, and that they are good women.  He’s using women at St Peters when money comes across the ocean to provide food that heals their bodies and vehicles that take them home, where they might be restored.  In time they may marry again and have children again and know the goodness God wants for them.

 

God wanted life for these women to be different from the start. 

 

I see the ways that war and hunger and disease have changed Uganda each day.  The people have an empty, vacuous expression, an unflinching weariness about them. When you say you are feeling sick, they are greatly concerned and ask if you are "suffering from a disease."  They have lived amongst pain, uncertainty and scarcity and their faces show this.  

The heart of God has desired something different for them.  He has desired peace and prosperity, health and plenty for them and for their children.  I am sure of this because I see the redemption of his people now.....here in Uganda.  I see their dawn shining at the hospital, in the precious innocence of the children at the primary school.  I see God working here to bring that peace out of the tragedy of war that they have seen.  He is bringing forth the desires of their hearts.

God wanted your life to be different.  He has watched the years pass, desiring to stop the tragedies and the pain, to take away your heartbreaks and disappointments---to give you the thing that would give you peace.

But human beings are cursed.  They are touched by evil.  They cannot hear the voice of God when it comes to them.  A violent and profane race, they consume the messengers of God without being changed.  It is  by the grace of God and the grace of God alone, that even one of us hears his voice calling in the desert.  

This is the business of God.  This is what he does each day.  It has been his work and his nature since the fall, since we first looked away from his face.  He reaches and He calls and He sends His servants and messengers to us in hopes that we might turn and be healed.  

 

He created us in glory to love Him completely, freely.  We broke from his love to find knowledge of ourselves, knowledge outside of God.  He sent a promise to Abraham, that He was going to win us all back Somehow.  He sent the law to Moses and to the nation of Israel to set them apart that He might Somehow win us all back.  He promised David that Somehow, He was going to win us all back.  He sent this promise in each prophet to Israel.  He sent this same promise of faithfulness over and over like a husband to an unfaithful wife who, in the midst of her affairs and unfaithfulness, continues to receive desperate love letters of reconciliation from her husband, and burns each one.  

My darling, somehow, we can be together again.  We can save this.  I still love you, we can work this out.  

But she doesn't believe him.  And it hurts so badly not to believe him, somehow, because really, she wants it to be true too.  But she won't reconcile.  It's too hard.  She's done too much now.  It's too late.

And so when this somehow, when this great "Somehow" comes to us, in the womb of a virgin, to win us all back, we burn it too.....we hang it on a cross and mock it, because we have been practicing for generations.  Even now we burn it, when we ignore the Holy Spirit in our lives calling us to return to the Lord.

Christ was the "Somehow" promised from the very beginning.  When He came to the earth and looked at Jerusalem he said this:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord."

Luke 13:34-35

The husband longing for reconciliation cannot go and kidnap his wife.  He cannot go and force her to love him, to work out their problems.  They both have to want it.  

God cannot reach out any farther to you without wrenching away your freedom.  And He refuses to touch that, because love is free and total and faithful and sacrificial.  And He is love.  

Which is why you are free.  You are free to reject God because he is unjust.  Because He allows evil.  Because this whole church thing is for the weak.  Because religion is a device to control the masses.  Because His "people" are particularly unfriendly or ignorant or because the church is unappealing or full of narrow bigots....You are free to bring yourself pain and separation and isolation, and to bring that for those around you, those you love.

Or you are free to choose the things that would bring you peace, to finally choose to claim redemption for yourself.  To choose love for yourself.  

Just admit it.  Admit that you are in a pile on the bed, wishing you were dead.

The Ugandans are doing it.  Why can't you?

So we're driving down the road and we feel a big bump and a loud screech.  Out the left window, suddenly we see a tire fly off to the side of the road, just barely missing a few bicycle taxis and pedestrians.  We are stopped.  We get out to see this.  Lots of Ugandans stop to help and we make four or five new friends.  This is Africa.  

Angela Kabugho at the school that her parents helped to paint. 

Ok so this is a bicycle taxi.  Imagine this, except in motorcycle form, and I am on the back, giggling.
A photograph from compline during the first two weeks with the group; the power is out.