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I live in a hungry valley, an open mouth turned up towards heaven.  It swallows the rain and most days its humid like the back of your throat.  Somedays clouds roll in and let the valley catch its breath.  Cool air from the mountains drifts in and dries out the sweat of your skin.

The rain brings a green that blinds you.  It spreads out for miles, and life comes in spite of the heat.  Sunsets come in kaleidescope colors to greet the tide of the hills – and you can hear the LORD say, “It is good.”

There are shadows in the hills – dark, dirt roads that pass through miles of farmland and scattered homesteads.  Cattle pass along the roads, shit while they stare at you, dare you to drive past – goats scramble in the ditches, not quite round enough to be eaten.  These are the hills of passing fathers and dying widows.  These hills are orphans themselves.  Lonely backdrops for lonely deaths.

Life expectancy here is dropping fast – maybe around twenty-eight years old.  Unemployment is at forty percent, and higher in rural areas; over forty percent of the population has AIDS (probably closer to half).  Death runs in the blood and gets passed through ripe ignorance, innocent inheritance, oppressive expectations, and a tired hopelessness.  In a nation where it feels like you can breathe the virus in, where half the folks you know are dying and poverty has an appetite of its own – the window seems slim to escape.  Death seems inevitable, no matter the way it comes.

But there are lights in these hills – people who have met the resurrected Jesus, been transformed, and seen the Kingdom face to face.  They have a new song in their mouth and they sing with a passion and hope that bleeds through in a congregation of harmony.  They are deep people.  They grieve deeply, hope deeply, and groan deeply for redemption to kiss the shadows around them.  The valley groans too, deeply, from the back of its throat.

I lay awake at night in the valley and stick to my sheets.  I can see the city through the window at my feet.  But I think about myself more than I think about the city, I fear my own pride and weakness more than any AIDS epidemic, and some days I only love the fatherless because their loneliness reminds me of my own.

In all these things there is a taste of the Fall.  Everything from my deep self-obsession and insecurity to the tears of orphans and disintegrating young women- it all bears the echo of the Liar and Accuser – bits of death and hell.
 
Somehow all of this time of being in Africa, all of this time of being alive, is about learning to hope – to look past the dump of the world and the card tricks of the enemy to see what is unseen: the father with fierce fists and open arms poised to lose everything and stop at nothing just to bring us home, the Father whose ears prick at the sound of orphan cries and whose blood boils when no one answers.
 
So I’m fighting for faith like Abraham.
 
In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”
 
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.
 
No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”
 
But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

After a year and a half in Africa I feel like I write the same blog over and over again: light vs. dark; the tug of orphans at my own heart and the heart of God; the brief, beautiful reminders of redemption and the confident, if impatient, longing for full redemption; the ever deepening “amen. come, Lord Jesus.” that comes in the last strokes of scripture and in every moment we feel the bite of the world.

It all adds up to a moment I can’t get out of, or, perhaps, the moment we all find ourselves in: the tension that comes between the resurrection and the kingdom fully come.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I have been fully known. – Paul (the fierce terrorist who met fiercer grace)

Thanks for reading these things.

Your eyes must be burned out by now.  If I was something more financially rigged than a missionary we could all go to the optometrist on my dime, at the same time even, one big party of getting our sight back and comparing prescriptions.  I’d get some glasses like Elvis Costello and you could try something slick like disposable contacts.

maybe someday.

grace and peace.

3 responses to “Are we flicking empty lighters in the dark? Or, Do these sparks suggest a sunrise?”

  1. matt! I ove this blog, even though it made me cry. I miss those times, though when all feels lost and then God shows up. Hold on to those moments! Know that I am praying for you and am Glad you are over there, making a differnece in so many lives!

    PS. I took my students to the arc cause they work there now, and I saw one of your green shirts. I thought of and missed you!

    PPS. No one else better be stealing my goodnights! =).

    praying for you!

  2. You are a poet, Matt. To see and write about both the splendor and the repulsiveness of an area with such images is a gift. Just like God, you see in these people something so lovely, yet also the grip of sin and Satan that permeates the area.
    Fight on, soldier!

  3. My eyes do burn, but it’s because your writing caused a girl to cry. Thanks for sharing your heart, it is beautiful.