Are we flicking empty lighters in the dark? Or, Do these sparks suggest a sunrise?

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.

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.

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.