come

Check out the CiH blog I just posted, More Than a Statistic, for the background on this post.

I sit down to write this blog entry exhausted. My emotions are spilled out all over this patio. Geckos and mosquitos are gathering around me, bats flying overhead (quite Cinderella-esque). But my night isn’t over yet. My head is still spinning; work left undone, heart shattered.

Why? Why did this news hit me so hard in a nation where that monster of a disease is one all-too-common?

Maybe it’s because I thought my morning/afternoon was frustrating because internet was slow, people were being difficult at the office to book a market stall, the grocery’s AC was broken so cheese was rotten and bread was all sold out. Because I thought about my inconveniences as the end of the world.

Until my heart shattered. And I was faced with the reality and depth of my sin of ungratefulness, of pride, of self-focus. Even in a nation that I’m “serving” in. Surprise, I’m a human. And it rocked me to the core.

Questions still fly around my head. Why won’t he be cured? Why can’t he afford those nifty little pills that at least let him be comfortable and extend life for a few more days? What about her little ones? Why do I have so much, yet all she hesitantly asks for is food for his fading body?

What does Jesus think about all of this? I know He’s here. I know this desperation, this seemingly hopelessness, is here to draw me to real hope, the hope of a life with Him forever.

But sometimes all I know in my head just can’t rush down to my heart fast enough to dull the pain. Sometimes the pain itself is good. The wrestling with life. The choosing to see Jesus and faith and hope for what they are rather than what culture says they are. The revealing of real love. The lament of all of the terrible hurt in this world, most namely HIV/AIDS.

Health related issues have always done a number to my heart here. Whether Given’s malaria, or Elina’s migraines, or the boy in pink’s patchy hair, it all just seems so mysterious. One thing I can’t control. One thing I KNOW could be better if only they lived in the US. But they don’t. And that doesn’t make life any less for them. The faith and joy I see in those people would suggest otherwise, actually. They know Jesus IN the junk, not just as a cure to the junk. The Sovereign One. The Comforter. The Hope. They know that real life doesn't end at death. 

On a night when everything seems all too much, all too confusing, my prayer is simple: Jesus, come.