Friday – School’s Out!

“Happiness is in doing”

Anticipation!

God’s Forgotten Children

I am sitting in my office for the first time in two weeks and trying hard to hold on to Africa.  But my life is quickly filling up with the old stuff – work, grocery lists, car repairs, what’s for dinner.  It is already obvious, one day back, that it won’t be easy to maintain an intimacy with Kenya.  But I am conflicted about what to do with all that I have experienced on this pilgrimage.

I remain stunned by the degree of poverty and suffering I saw in Africa. There is no justice in the fact that I throw away good food every day while I personally now know people who are starving to death.  But “stunned” is a temporary state that gives me permission to remain immobile for only so long.  It’s what happens next that frightens me.  What if nothing happens? What if I forget the faces of the hungry people I met last week?  I pray God will help me to remember all the things I would rather forget.

I miss James.  He is 15, a gifted artist.  While in Kenya, James hung out on our porch every night until we insisted he go home, always after dark.  Nobody at James’ house cares where he goes or what time he comes home.  I don’t know what God would have me do about James, the Kenyan artist with a gentle spirit but no hope, but his burdens are heavy on my heart.  I don’t want to let my to-do list crowd James out.  God, I pray you will stalk me like a thief in the night until I step up to the plate for James in a way pleasing to you.

Alice and I were an “item” while I was in Kenya.  I love Alice and I hope she loves me too.  Alice is 14 but says she is 12.  She lies about her age because disease has kept her small and she is ashamed of her size.  Alice told me that she had never had a birthday party or a birthday cake her entire life.  On our last night in Kenya, our team gave her both.  It was such an easy wish to fill.  It required no sacrifice.  Please, Lord, give me the courage to make sacrifices, huge Holy sacrifices, in Your name and for the glory of Your kingdom.

God loaned me His eyes and His ears and His heart to encounter His forgotten children in Kenya.  I wore God’s heart as my own for 14 days.  I pray I never forget how it feels to walk around with a heart broken by the suffering of others.  If I forget, the loan was a waste of His time and my life.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Matthew 25:35-36

by Becky Lyle Pinkard, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Makes Me Smile

Sitting by a fire on a July evening is a gift of 7,500 feet on the equator.  The team is all gone, now safely arrived in the US.  Tomorrow morning begins my 30-hour+ journey of cars, trains and airplanes. Before I leave I’ll fulfill the old Africa tradition of kissing the four walls in anticipation of returning.

But tonight is one for reflection and celebration.

Our team was a rich gift both to the Africans and me. I know that Jesus saw each of them as a gift as well.  So much witnessed and experienced. Makes me smile.

My last day though is also one of melancholy. A long litany of final meetings, African thank you’s and reminisces. As the day draws to close and the fire roars, I have my porch kids still here, unanxious to go to the places they live.  I’m reminded that when I leave, the safe place they’ve found here will disappear and the reality of another life will sink in fully – for them and for me.  Christ has mysteriously blessed me with their same heart and I fear for them and for me. But then Christ has also blessed me with the same hope and I rejoice.

The final victory is won and whether we live in the undeserved freedom and plenty of the US or the challenging world of much of Africa, He smiles on us all and promises us an eternity of joy.

So I prepare to leave, and I pause to thank Him. To thank Him for my life and its intersection with those I witness here in a land where the Garden and Gehenna reside so near. And as I offer praise by the summer flames, He speaks to me and says, “It is finished.”

And in this completed work I think of what it will be for all of us to play and rejoice together on His porch eternally.

Makes me smile.

PS: I’ll be back.

by Jim Wood, Senior Pastor for First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Most Welcome

Whenever I’m able, I worship with the patients and staff of Nazareth Hospital.  Services are held every Sunday morning at 9:00 in the main corridor – exactly wide enough for three plastic chairs and an aisle just broad enough to navigate the patients who choose to walk or be wheeled in. As they do, goat-skinned drums beat out a steady rhythm and perfectly-pitched African voices cry out in praise through a language I don’t perfectly understand, yet which feels so very familiar.

“You are most welcome.”  Hospitality resides deep in the African heart.  A guest is always valued as perhaps an angel unaware.  So it this morning.  “Most welcome” is the phrase repeated over and over as people gather to encounter a Word of hope, desperately challenged by the illness and suffering each carries.

Granted, for me there is a challenge to this “most welcome.” Not only are the songs and prayers in a language I barely grasp; as a non-Catholic, the heart of worship, the Eucharist, is not open to me.  There were days in the militant dawn of my youth where this distance would distract me but not in this late afternoon of my days, when I sit, gratefully drawn in to taste the presence of Christ through the lips of others.

A priestly African hand gracefully lifts a bleached white Host over the black bowed heads of grey pajama-ed patients, blue-bloused nursing students, and white-jacketed doctors. The color of grace deepens the timbre of his voice, “This is my body, given for you.”

As the sound of the Gospel reverberates off these stone hospital walls, feasting on the faces of the faithful, I feel most welcome.

by Jim Wood, Senior Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

 

 

Dirty Feet

“You can’t walk in someone else’s shoes until you take your own shoes off,” Jim Wood reminds the group before our nightly devotion. It is a simple task that has become exponentially meaningful as our pilgrimage continues.

Two days ago, I returned to Nazareth Hospital and hesitantly removed my shoes. They had served their purpose as a sanitary barrier between my clean white feet and the sewage running through the streets of Korogocho.

Korogocho, literally translates to “deep trash,” is synonymous with dirty, and is inevitably compared to the gates of hell to anyone who passes through its devastated streets.

The air is ripe with the mixed stench of humans and disregarded animals. It looks as though God has changed the color setting of Korogocho to “dull” in comparison to the brilliance of the other places I have seen in Kenya. My body was in constant limbo. Do I look forward or turn away? Do I breathe or stealthily shield my nostrils from the plagued air? Do I feel the textures around me or dig deep for the non-existent item in my empty pockets?

We meandered through an alley, sometimes unsuccessfully dodging the low-lying roofs of the impossibly crowded living spaces until we reached the room where we could conduct an abbreviated Art Therapy session.

Wandering through the makeshift classroom, I noticed that one boy used his nimble fingers to draw a man shooting a loaded gun and a red doodle of marker labeled “water.” The exercise asked for pupils to include objects that they want in their lives inside of a circle, and all bad things on the outside of the circle.

“Why is water on the bad side of the circle?” I inquired. Looking down at his paper, Kevin replied flatly, “My best friend jumped in the river. He drowned.” His affect communicated the guilt of being unable to save his best friend. As for the man shooting a gun, he explained with eyes still downcast that his family had been robbed at gunpoint, “but everything is okay.”

The most disturbing sight of all was the absence of emotion on his face. Death is routine, it is a constant force in his life.

I reflect on one of the infinite differences between children from the United States and those from Kenya. Overexposure to violent media has led our children to have an aggressive nature. Violence on television has no consequences. The reality in Korogocho of fatal illness and crime has had a desensitizing effect on the children. There is no comparison between seeing death on television and observing death in reality.

I turned to the next page that asked,

“What is your greatest dream?”

The page revealed a man in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. “Do you want to be a doctor?” I asked rhetorically to fill the silence that had grown since the last page. He nodded his head “yes.”

I asked him to look up and tell me with absolution “I want to be a doctor.”

That would not do it. I needed him to promise me that this was his dream, that no one will change this. He replied again with a nod. I checked through my mental notebook of actions that had a profound impact on me as a child, and quickly decided that a pinky promise was in order.

He chuckled and held out his pinky and repeated, “I want to be a doctor and I will be a doctor.” He kissed his thumb and I kissed mine as is customary for a pinky promise. He looked in my eyes and smiled.

There was a tiny light in the darkness of that city. This is God’s Kingdom. There is hope for more light, and there is work to be done. I may not have walked in Kevin’s shoes that day, but if only for a moment, God took my shoes off and got my feet a little dirty. I still carry the filth of Korogocho on my feet, and don’t plan on rinsing it away.

by Ruthie Rand, a college student and member of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

God’s Forgotten Children

I am sitting in my office for the first time in two weeks and trying hard to hold on to Africa.  But my life is quickly filling up with the old stuff – work, grocery lists, car repairs, what’s for dinner.  It is already obvious, one day back, that it won’t be easy to maintain an intimacy with Kenya.  But I am conflicted about what to do with all that I have experienced on this pilgrimage.

I remain stunned by the degree of poverty and suffering I saw in Africa. There is no justice in the fact that I throw away good food every day while I personally now know people who are starving to death.  But “stunned” is a temporary state that gives me permission to remain immobile for only so long.  It’s what happens next that frightens me.  What if nothing happens? What if I forget the faces of the hungry people I met last week?  I pray God will help me to remember all the things I would rather forget.

I miss James.  He is 15, a gifted artist.  While in Kenya, James hung out on our porch every night until we insisted he go home, always after dark.  Nobody at James’ house cares where he goes or what time he comes home.  I don’t know what God would have me do about James, the Kenyan artist with a gentle spirit but no hope, but his burdens are heavy on my heart.  I don’t want to let my to-do list crowd James out.  God, I pray you will stalk me like a thief in the night until I step up to the plate for James in a way pleasing to you.

Alice and I were an “item” while I was in Kenya.  I love Alice and I hope she loves me too.  Alice is 14 but says she is 12.  She lies about her age because disease has kept her small and she is ashamed of her size.  Alice told me that she had never had a birthday party or a birthday cake her entire life.  On our last night in Kenya, our team gave her both.  It was such an easy wish to fill.  It required no sacrifice.  Please, Lord, give me the courage to make sacrifices, huge Holy sacrifices, in Your name and for the glory of Your kingdom.

God loaned me His eyes and His ears and His heart to encounter His forgotten children in Kenya.  I wore God’s heart as my own for 14 days.  I pray I never forget how it feels to walk around with a heart broken by the suffering of others.  If I forget, the loan was a waste of His time and my life.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Matthew 25:35-36

by Becky Lyle Pinkard, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.