A MUST, MUST READ FOR
EVERY CHRIST FOLLOWER
The
author of this blog post is a missionary in North Africa with Pioneer Bible
Translators. She, along with her husband and two little girls, lives on the
outskirts of a refugee camp working to facilitate disciple-making, Bible
translation and mother tongue literacy among two least-reached Muslim groups.
Her favorite things about North Africa include drinking scalding hot mint tea,
wearing colorful robes, watching her daughters play on ant hills, and hearing
people’s stories. Her least favorite things include rats in the kitchen and
dry season dust storms.
“A
couple of years ago we had our first karama. We had just finished
building our house in a refugee camp in North Africa, and in good North African
fashion, we decided to have a party celebrating God’s generosity. Like most
average Americans, we had never really held a karama before,
(as opposed to North Africans who hold one to thank God for just about
everything – a new baby, a new donkey, a new house), so we asked our friends
and neighbors to show us the ropes.
The
goat and the sheep were slaughtered just after sunrise. The women showed up a
few hours later, heads laden with smoke-stained pots, charcoal stoves, and
burnished clay jabanas. As guests filtered in our bamboo gate
throughout the course of the morning and settled into plastic chairs and reed
mats laid out in pools of shade across the compound, the smell of roasting
coffee beans, mint and smoke wafted across the yard. Our girls ran around with
plates full of brightly wrapped toffees, handing half out to old men in white
turbans and stuffing the rest into their own grubby mouths.
By
early afternoon enormous aluminum trays were carried out to the crowd, two men
on each side limping under the weight of the folds of dark brown kisra,
pyramids of pita bread, dishes of roasted meat, wheels of limes and small dunes
of red pepper. We all washed our hands from the same ibrit, and then
circled around the platters and ate and ate and ate.
At
some point, when most people were cradling scalding cups of ginger coffee in the
sockets of their palms, a plane few overhead. What I noticed first was not the
distant drone of an Antanov engine, but the sudden electric silence of the
dozens of men, women and children gathered around our home. Everyone shielded
their eyes and gazed nervously heavenward as the bomber flew overhead, winking
brightly in the sky as it took a shortcut across the finger of the country where
we sat. A few minutes later several people nodded knowingly and asked if we
heard the distant thud of bombs falling on the home they had fled only months
before. Eventually, we turned back to our thanksgiving feast, eating and
drinking and tentatively returning to laughter as the presence of an enemy faded
into the distance.
You
prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. (Psalm 23:5)
I
have been turning these words over for the past year or so, becoming better
acquainted with the roll and feel of them in the palm of my mind. And I keep
coming back to the same question.
Why there?
Of
all the places to set a table, why in the presence of our enemies? Couldn’t it
have been somewhere else? Somewhere more appetizing, more comfortable? More
safe?
I
am still learning how to answer the why part of the question, but I can’t
shake the deepening belief that God truly delights in setting a rich table in
some of the deepest mires of humanity. The gore and mess of this world have not
scared him off; in fact, he is holding out a steady hand, inviting us to join
him there, in the middle of all the brokenness.
My
North African brothers and sisters are already much better at this than I am.
Their ability to return to communal laughter moments after a plane has brought
back terrifying memories of the government bombing their villages is not the
only reason I say this. I remember one time seeing an old woman holding a
malnourished baby that was surely only days away from death. I watched as she
bounced the listless infant, singing it lullabies and pouring love into the very
thing that was about to leave this life and cause her and her family great pain.
I often see kids clamoring around old men who have outlived their usefulness to
society but who are nonetheless integrated into community in everyday life with
no complaint or suggestion that there should be any other way.
There
have been times I have been tempted to loosen the tendrils of my heart from
North Africa. One more evacuation, one more rumor of rebels, one more rat or
blistering hot day and I feel like I have had enough. There are days that I
think, this place is just too hard to love. And each time I think
that, I feel God closing his hands around mine as I cradle the sharp edges of
this beautiful place and let it cut me to the bone once more.
He
scoots my chair up gently behind me as I rest at the table. My enemies lurk in
the shadows behind us. Sometimes it is Antanov bombers and rebel soldiers. Other
times it is sickness or weakness. Sometimes pride, sometimes insecurity. Most
often it is fear, nebulous and ill-defined, but pervasive and sometimes
overwhelming.
And
yet, the table is spread with such bounty. In North Sudan, my table it is laid
with the delicacies of spiritual formation that comes through friendships with
refugee women. I daily gorge on the delight of simple living that I was too weak
to actually make happen in America – eating only whatever is ripe and local,
hosting strangers regularly, having a small house and walking alot. I savor
getting to share almost every meal with my husband and watching my daughters
carry around baby goats. I taste again and again the sweetness of having to
trust in God alone, and finding him faithful. Every time.
So
I wash my hands in the water pouring from the ibrit alongside
my North African brothers and sisters. We turn our back on the Valley of the
Shadows of Death and tear off a piece of bread from one loaf. For surely
goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. And we will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever.
For
more:
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