It’s like the skin of this place is red.

Everywhere, red soil sheathes things, like hardly under the surface of Africa’s dirt is her heart. Like you could scratch your toe here and feel the pulse of what’s alive. Everywhere here is a thin place.

We drive red roads to meet Anna.

We pass bicycles grunting under water jugs, bags stretched taut with cassava. I lean out a window like a windblown sheepdog to get a photo of the bike with a real live pig tied down behind the driver.

The Farmer’s not going to believe it. Until he sees it and does. Hope and I unanimously decide we won’t be showing that snapshot to any of her brothers. There are certain things that really should not be tried at home by amateurs and one unwilling, oversized hog.

The van turns at El Shaddai’s Vetrinarian Service, right next to Slow-but-Sure Salon – no kidding. The van jolts to a stop. This church must be it? This must be the Compassion project right here? So the last five years our letters have been opened right here.

Anna has grown up right here, the girl with the goat and the white patent future-sized shoes. Hope reaches over my shoulder to sling open the van door, anxious and ready to crawl out over my neck if need be.

And it’s written right there in the dirt beside the van, right into the dirt in front of the church:

Welcome to True Love Baptist Church.

Wait — the child we sponsored on Valentine’s Day, 2008 – she’s ministered to by Compassion at True Love Baptist Church?

It’s like the rusting sign out front’s nodding and grinning.

It’s like the wind just turns for a moment and a corner of your life lifts and you get an unexpected glimpse of the underside of things and His ways steal a bit of breath from the common lung.

It’s like if you could see the underside of your life you’d see the God over all the details of your life.

It’s like we aren’t made of cells but stories.

And then Hope points to a little girl in a white dress.

A little girl in a satin white dress with a white summer hat, with handmade paper white lilies in hand and she’s walking across red soil.

“She looks like a little queen” — Hope whispers happy – and all I can think is of Esther and for such a time as this.

For such a time as this to cup a child’s face, for such a time as this to take a reaching hand, for such a time this to lose yourself in the joy of giving your life away.

Her cheek is warm in my palm.

“My name is Anna.” I have to lean in.

Her voice is slow, this buttery whisper. She doesn’t look up, just takes my other hand. “I am so glad you are finally here.”

What takes us so long to finally get to here?

Why in the world does it take us so long to love?

She tells us this is Elizabeth, her sister. I tell her this is Hope, who has written so many of her letters. Hope kneels all of her six feet down.

“Hope.” She taps her chest, there above her heart.

Anna nods. “Auntie Hope.”

And her other hand takes Hope’s.

And I close my eyes, heart too close to the surface.

We serve her dinner. She serves us stories.

This was where the Lord’s Resistance Army used to terrorize. Her mother gestures toward the window. Here. Across her chest is this slash of a raised and glassy scar.

“Twenty years of warring—“ Anna’s mother’s looking past us. Like she’s lived through half a wilderness.

“And then there is the AIDS.” Her eyes tell a whole wilderness. Anna taps my knee. “I want to tell you of Peter.” She tells us of Peter who is 4 years older, who is away at school, of her cousins whose mother died, who are orphans now, who live with them now, she tell us of Daddy who has left for Kampala to try to find work. She tells of us all the things missing.

“It is a long time since I have seen Daddy.” Anna pulls at the edges of her dress. I almost don’t hear her. “Sometimes my mother cries.”

Sometimes women cry alone and children see.

What in the world are we all doing for such a time as this?

Anna laces her fingers through mine and I look down at the little girl in the white dress and she is no queen Esther in the palace. I am.

I am sitting at a Compassion project in Africa, sitting with all the Mordecais in sackcloth outside the palace gate. We’re the ones inside the palace gate.

I am sitting in Uganda and all I can hear pounding in my head is Mordecai’s message to Esther:

“Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all your people suffer. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief will arise from some other place, but you and yours will die.” There are a thousand ways for your soul to die, to be the living dead.

You can look into eyes and hear the whisper from those outside the gate:

“You’ve got to use the life you’ve been given to give others life. If your life isn’t about giving relief — you don’t get real life. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”

You have got to use your position inside the gate for those outside the gate – or you’re in the position of losing everything. There are a thousand ways to be the living dead.

If you have any food in your fridge, any clothes in your closet, any small roof, rented or owned, over your head, you are richer than 75% of the rest of the world. We are the Esthers living inside the palace.

If you have anything saved in the bank, any bills in your wallet, any spare change in a jar, you are one of the top 8% wealthiest people in the world. We are the Esther’s living inside the gate.

If you can read these words right now, you have a gift 3 billion people right now don’t, if your stomach isn’t twisted in hunger pangs, you have a gift that 1 billion people right now don’t, if you know Christ, you have a gift that untold millions right now don’t. We are the ones living inside the gate.

It’s like you can hear the cry of the red soil of Africa’s pulsing right here with the heart of God: “You have got to use your position inside the gate for those outside the gate – or you’re in the position of losing everything — of losing your soul.“

You are where you are for such a time as this – not to gain anything — but to risk everything.

You are where you are for such a time as this — not to make an impression — but to make a difference.

You could have been the one outside of the gate. You could have been the one with the Lord’s Resistance Army slitting your child’s throat in the middle of the night, you could been the one born into a slum, raped without a hope, you could be the one born into AIDS, into starvation, into lives of wild Christ-less desperation. The reason you are inside the gate for such a time as this – is to risk your life for those outside the gate. If I perish, I perish.

Anna’s squeezing my hand.

My heart’s squeezing hard.

Under the same tree where the goat picture was taken, I untie a bundle of letters and I show Anna her letters, how we have kept them.

I show her the photo of her and the goat under this exact tree and how it’s been on our fridge for years, and when I turn it over, there is one cheerio stuck to the duct tape on the back. I pick the one stuck cheerio off the back of the photo.

I’m shaking my head, awed, us sitting here in Uganda at True Love Baptist with the little girl we sponsored on Valentine’s Day in 2008
and I choke it out, “Did you ever think that we would be sitting here under your tree with your goat photo?” I roll the years old cheerio in my hand.

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Anna nods.

“Wait — you did think this would happen? You are not surprised at all that we’re here? So we’re the only ones surprised we are here?” I ask her wide-eyed, half-laughing, half-stunned.

Anna smooths out her white dress.

“I knew that you would come.” She whispers calm. Her eyes find mine –

“I always knew that you would come.”

My head drops. How could Esther not come?

How could anyone on the inside of the gate forget the reason WHY they are on the inside of the gate?

For such a time as this — now.

I scratch my feet under Anna’s tree. And it’s like the red soil of Africa’s bleeding right here with the heart of God.

Related:
An Internet Love Story {Part 1} : How to Live Free
What Does a bit of Radical Christianity Really Look Like — Right Where You Are
Part 3 of #FarmGirlsinAfrica tomorrow, Lord willing

 

There’s one child on the other side of the gate today — who needs you not to turn away but to look into theirs eyes and just pray…
For such a time as this. For such a time as Now:
Here if you are in Canada and here if you live in the US
 

 

 

This is a love story.

A woman named Shannon lived in a suburb in Oklahoma and she had Rocks in her Dryer. The year was 2008.

On a farm in Canada, I had a lot of lost marbles.

And a clinging 3-year-old, very bad hair, 4 farmboys who only got out of ripped jeans on Sunday, and 1 dimpled tomboy who kept sweetly chopping her own bangs all by her herself.

I read Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer everyday. Me and a whole world of other women looking for bits of their lost selves. She made us laugh. It was like medicine to me.

Then she went and met a man on the internet. His name was Shaun and he had weird hair. The month was February. He asked her to fly across the world with him to Uganda.

And another woman named Boo Mama.

‘

It got crazy.

They beat off monkeys. The internet laughed so hard its side ached happy. (Boo Mama went on to write one of the funniest books ever and it just took the world by hilarity last week and we get to all say we knew her back when she wrote of monkey attacks and we couldn’t breathe.)

BooMama, she did that too: she sat on straw floor houses in Uganda. No bigger than her half bath. And she fell in love. With this little orphan girl with eyes that haunted big.

Shannon sat in HIV hospitals with the dying children and looked right through papery thin skin to the grey of death. She prayed like she never prayed. Sonic and Oklahoma and Alabama seemed like different planets.

With the red Uganda soil out her hotel window, Shannon wrote a post entitled “Hope.”

With Canadian farm fields out my window, I read every word. I had Hope – she had just turned nine and wore her ponytail up in a bow and she could catch pigs faster than any farm girl in the world.

This is what Shannon wrote that morning 5 years ago from Uganda:

“This little peanut of a girl had been following me all morning. As we listened to the songs, she fearlessly climbed up into my lap for a snuggle:

Her name is Peace.”

And on my lap in Canada was a little girl named Shalom – peace. Hope’s little sister.

Staring into the face of another little Peace.

It was those eyes. And that one white egg clasped in her ebony hand.

“She was carefully peeling a hard-boiled egg for her lunch,” Shannon’s words unfolded from the other side of the world, “but as soon as she peeled it, she offered it to me.”

Peace peeled it — and offered it to me. Something in me cracks open. The potential for new life — is in the giving your life away.

Peace gives – because that is what gives peace.

It’s the holding on to your life that has you tight-fisted, has you warring inside.

The only way to hold on to peace – is to let go.

Shalom had leaned forward to that screen — and touched little Peace’s face.

That offered egg in her hand. What in the world are we all holding on to? What are we clinging to, worrying about, believing really?

Worry is belief gone wrong.

Because you don’t believe that God will get it right.

But peace –

Peace is belief that exhales.

Because you believe that God’s provision is everywhere—like air.

Exhale. Let go. Peace is the belief that God’s provision is everywhere.

We could be someone else’s peace – someone else’s God-given provision.

And at 7:20 AM on Valentine’s Day, February 2008, in the deep of a Canadian winter, I leave this comment on Shannon’s blog:

We have a little girl named peace too… our Shalom…
Could our two Peace girls reach across the world and love?
We reach back… and offer to sponsor another child.

The perfect Valentine’s Day gift:

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” 1 Jn 3:16”

Peace exhales – and love lays down.

With Shalom in my lap and Hope leaning over my shoulder, we click over to Compassion’s website and pick out our first Compassion child, a little thumbnail of a girl. Her name is Anna. She is four.

“She is perfect,” Hope pushes back her crooked bangs, touches the screen, Anna’s face. I don’t know much about Anna, except she is from Uganda, she is four, and she is perfect.

Five years ago, on that first Compassion blogger’s trip, that’s what Shannon writes as the last lines of that blog post entitled “Hope” —

“After such a bleak day yesterday, I will confess that I got out of bed this morning wondering if my heart could even take in anymore. But even in the rampant poverty today, I saw hope.”

Hope.

Hope writes a letter to Anna in her 9-year-old scrawl.

Anna sends back a letter in her four-year-old scrawl.

Shalom draws pictures and licks envelopes closed. Hope opens a letter with a photo of Anna – wearing shoes she bought with birthday money we’d sent. And a goat – she bought a goat too. I laugh glory. I want to see that photo every day. I use a tab of grey duct tape and affix it to the fridge.

There is a peace that feeds your soul – the way you can give yourself away and be filled.

That photo stays on the fridge for years.

New photos come. Anna grows taller. We cup her photos like soul nourishment – like someone handed us an egg.

Hope blows out 14 birthday candles. She’s now almost 6 feet tall.

She runs in through this winter’s snow with the mail. In between the bills and the Canadian Tire Flyer, I find a Compassion envelope. Hope must have missed it? Shalom stands on a chair to look at Anna’s drawing of her church, her Sunday school. I read the letter out loud to kids scarfing down scrambled eggs. And then I don’t…

Then I throw arms up in the air and whoot only like a farmer’s wife can.

“Whaatt?! What does she say?” Hope pushes her chair back, reaches for the letter.

“Best Compassion Letter ever!” I’m waving it giddy.

“Whaaatt?” Hope’s laughing anxious —

“Look at that line — “Anna would like you to know that she has given her life to Christ.”

The angels would like you to know they combust into pure glory and stars split into fireworks and giving your life so one other gives their life to Christ is how you get joy beyond the walls of this world.

Compassion Canada would like to know  if they can film Anna’s story, if Hope would get on a plane and fly to Uganda and meet the little girl who was birthed in her heart out of a blog post named Hope. If a girl named Peace in Uganda and a girl named Shalom in Canada, could be threads in a story that tie Hope and her pigs, to Anna and her goats, and them both to Christ for all eternity. If one family on this side of the ocean could be the gift back – only to find that being the gift back is how you unwrap joy.

Hope packs her bags. We fly to Africa. We sleep, waiting for the light and the meeting of Anna.

Because there’s a love that can grow in you, that can stir you in the night with a wondering of what this world might look like for our children, for all the children of the world. You can listen for their breathing in sleep, you can listen for the children, yours and the world’s, listen for their turning in the night and how, even in sleep, how their arms reach.

The children’s arms reach even in sleep.

How they breathe and exhale and you could be done with worry, belief gone wrong, because you don’t believe that God will get it right, and you could breathe, peace – the belief that exhales. Because you believe that God’s provision is everywhere—like air.

God’s provision is everywhere — it’s us.

And all the world could come into the peace of reaching out. We could come into the presence of the reaching Christ. We who live with hands closed have lost all gold;  we who live with hands wide open have more than a thousand fold.  This is not a trite saying. This is the only way to make your life into a true, real-life love story. Is there anything else worth living?

There is Hope under a window in Africa, reaching, and there is a little African girl named Anna, and love can meet today.

There it is all around us, and you can feel it, the way love can touch and really enfold.

The way you rest in the grace of a love story and live free.

Part 2 of  A Global Love Story tomorrow, Lord willing… when Hope and Anna meet!

 

Will you take one moment today and look into one face here and pray for just one by name, right now — your real way of reaching out to a child and not turning away– pray for the beginning of a real-life love story:
Here if you are in Canada and here if you live in the US.

 

 

#FarmGirlsinAfrica have landed.
And traveled and traveled and traveled.
Including a small 12 seater plane, to northern parts of Uganda.

Today is our first day on the ground — hearts in our throats — and In His hands.

Love is always our only hope.

And hasn’t that always been the answer to every question in life? Not to only know of God’s love, not to only believe in God’s love — but to live in that love.

To experience it, the holy experience of it, to experience life with a God who is living and active and enveloping everything.

Because not only have we been given the most fantastic story of Grace to share, but the only thing worth gaining is the memory of the giving of yourself — and that will outlast time. 

#storiestofollow

And hath made of one blood all nations of men …

Acts 17:26

#FarmGirlsinAfrica landed in Uganda at midnight! We fly in the morning to the north. Pictures (when the sun’s happily up) and stories coming soon — so it’s a humbling privilege, while we are making the last leg of our flying, to invite  Mr. Jon Bloom, President of Desiring God, today. When I met Mr. Bloom at his office this past winter — I was deeply struck, taken aback, by his humility, his genuine warmth and down-to-earth grace — this was a man who sincerely walked with Jesus. Mr. Bloom authentically lives what he so compellingly writes.

“Here is a call for the endurance of the saints” (Revelation 14:12).

We all long for rest and refreshment. That’s a God-given longing that he promises to fulfill: “I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish” (Jeremiah 31:25).

And in a very real way Jesus gives rest to “all who labor and are heavy laden” and come to him (Matthew 11:28). But in this age, it is not the complete rest.

In this age, Jesus grants us the gospel rest of ceasing the impossible labor of self-atonement for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21). But in embracing the gospel we find ourselves also drafted into a war—a war to keep believing the gospel and a war to spread it to others. In this age we “strive to enter that [complete] rest” of the age to come (Hebrews 4:11).

And wars are exhausting—especially long ones. That’s why you are often tired. Most soldiers who experience the fierceness of combat want to get out of it. That’s why you feel urges to escape or surrender. That’s why there are times you’re tempted to give up.

But don’t give up. No, rather “take courage! Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded” (2 Chronicles 15:7).

Don’t give up when that familiar sin, still crouching at your door after all these years, pounces again with temptation.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Don’t give up when you feel that deep soul weariness from long battles with persistent weaknesses.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).

Don’t give up when your long prayed-for prayers have not yet been answered.

And he told them [the parable of the persistent widow] to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

Don’t give up when the devil’s fiery darts of doubt land and make you reel.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day…in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Ephesians 6:13,16).

Don’t give up when the fragmenting effect of multiple pressures seems relentless.

“But as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…(2 Corinthians 6:4-5).

Don’t give up when the field the Lord has assigned you to is hard and the harvest does not look promising:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

Don’t give up when you labor in obscurity and you wonder how much it even matters.

Your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:4).

Don’t give up when your reputation is damaged because you are trying to be faithful to Jesus.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (Matthew 5:11).

Don’t give up when waiting on God seems endless.

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Don’t give up when you have failed in sin. Don’t wallow. Repent (again), get your eyes off yourself and back on Jesus, get up and get back in the fight.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9); if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).

Jesus knows your works (Revelation 2:2) and he understands the war (Hebrews 12:3). “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Finish the race (2 Timothy 4:7). “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Don’t give up.

When he sent me an early manuscript of his book to read, Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith, I read slowly. Captivated by the stories of Scripture all over again. I made notes. I re-read. The chapters, 35 imaginative retellings of Bible stories, made me hungrier for God, His Truth, the company of Christ. Mr. Bloom’s Scripture saturated lines stirred a trust in God’s promises instead of personal perceptions. I humbly encourage you to pick up Not by Sight… penned by a man who quietly, authentically lives what he so compellingly writes. Perfect devotional reading for your morning cup of espresso or tea!