Praying to God, wondering if you're the answer to your prayers... or something like that.

A week last Friday a Kenya friend who I've mentioned before - A - who lost his daughter in a bus crash in August went for chemotherapy. A lymphoma that had been operated on but was trying to grow back. Somehow, Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi agreed to pay for his drugs and couriered them, wrapped in ice to a small care facility near the Ugandan border where A would be looked after. The first round was done on the Friday night. On the Sunday came a text from his phone asking any recipients to put the carers in touch with A's relatives as he was in a coma, and breathing only very shallowly. Emergencies are normally managed through family structures, and people normally give what they can. A's family did not come to help. Maybe because of strained relationships, and the cost that his AIDS treatment may have been to them in the past. As a church home group that A used to attend, it was a tough decision to know whether to get involved. Not least because with our friend being in a coma, he was not the one requesting money from us. When someone has AIDS, you know that medically speaking it will eventually take it's toll and maybe this is that moment. My thoughts even stretched to the need for the costs of a burial needing to be covered if that was to happen. A had believed that God was granting him  few more years, and on hearing that he was not on IVs, it seemed that the fight between life and death was not balanced. Hearing that news late on Monday I prayed that my mind would be swung the way God wanted it to.

One of the first verses I read in my Bible happened to be Luke 11:42 where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees about their hypocrisy.

Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

To me in this context, this verse said to not help would have been to neglect justice for A in the level of care he received and neglect God's love for him. Thankfully, God turned the hearts of several others of us in supporting, and so it was that we paid about £75 for an ambulance to come from Nyanza General Hospital and collect him, and hoped that the hospital bills would not come our way (they don't release you if you don't pay, rather the bill continues to increase indefinitely). That was last Wednesday last week. From then we heard nothing.

Yesterday morning, a week later, who do I get a call from, but A. He's in Eldoret - 120km from where his treatment was begun! We didn't pay for an ambulance to get his that far. He doesn't know how he got there, and he's been discharged for free but doesn't have his wallet or phone there (maybe they've been stolen, or maybe the care home has kept them safely). He remembers nothing of the chemo, no pain, no discomfort. What a miraculous turn of events. On the night before I had candidly told the home group that he could well have passed away, and we had asked a local pastor in Kisumu to search for A at Nyanza General Hospital (of which there are two). Amazing. It felt like he was back from the dead. I wonder if Lazarus would have been as confused when walking out of his grave in the Bible.

Today I'm reminded of the great testimony to God's goodness that he provides, but of the great trials that still run through life, as I hear of a family I know back in Wales whose youngest daughter was yesterday diagnosed with a brain tumour. I don't have anything special to say, other than that I'm planning to remember them every day in prayer, and I know that God has it in his hands and he knows best.

Normal?! Normal for who?

Lately I've been thinking on what is normal. What is my expectation of a normal life for myself? What about for those around me and a mile away in Kibera? Do they have the right to the same expectations of normal as me? A few weeks ago I drafted up a long blog entry about A and his daughter C (aged 6) who I last mentioned in November 2009. They've been through so much over the past year, and so I wrote it all down succinctly as a steam of thought. The paragraph stretched to a side of type. I'm sure I missed some events off. Such a crazy year. On Saturday 22nd August his daughter passed away instantly in minibus crash on returning from a funeral. A had been too unwell to attend.

What can be said after a year of hardships? My church home group here in Nairobi were regularly praying from A and C, that God would bring them through this period of trial to be able to lie down in green pastures in the manner of Psalm 23. With A being regularly unwell, there was always some concern for the future that his daughter would have been orphaned and so I take the view that she has gone on to heaven ahead of him. Yet it's still hard to understand.

I'm reading through Job at this time in my Bible reading. In Job chapter 21 verses 7 to 14, Job says:

 ⁷ Why do the wicked live on,
       growing old and increasing in power?
 ⁸ They see their children established around them,
       their offspring before their eyes.
 ⁹ Their homes are safe and free from fear;
       the rod of God is not upon them.
 ¹⁰ Their bulls never fail to breed;
       their cows calve and do not miscarry.
 ¹¹ They send forth their children as a flock;
       their little ones dance about.
 ¹² They sing to the music of tambourine and harp;
       they make merry to the sound of the flute.
 ¹³ They spend their years in prosperity
       and go down to the grave in peace.
 ¹⁴ Yet they say to God, 'Leave us alone!
       We have no desire to know your ways.

This is what I and my home group ask - why do good things sometimes, or dare I say often happen to bad people? Yet we also know that those who plotted evil against A and C, (who have even used the occult to attempt to bring misfortune) on them will one day be judged, and that will be an awful thing for them. For A, he has never had much prosperity to be restored as was the case with Job but our prayer is that God would continue to speak to him and tell him that he is good and his love endures for ever, even though it can seem hard at times.

So that's that. But what about the wider discussion on normalcy? Do I have the right to except God to keep me living comfortably? No. Do I have the expectation that God will one day remove everything I have other than himself? No. But he could. Would this change may understanding of God's character at all? Yes and no - my hope would be that it'd make me more into the person he wants me to be.

I'll continue dwelling on these things some more.

Notes on having a 'mission' in life

Work. This is something I have done much thinking about over the past 21 months in Africa. I remember back in 2004 when applying to UCCF’s Relay Training program, telling them how inadequate I thought I was for the job (or no doubt something like that) and hearing back “we think you’re too hard on yourself.” At this point my internal monologue was saying something like “if only you knew!”

At university, my favourite week of the year used to be missions week – I loved the energy and the hustle and bustle the week or two demanded. Usefulness. Again, when working at a trade union (that will remain nameless) – it might not have been an organisation that was always well organised – but I knew what it felt like to long periods when I was well in my element. In my first ten months there, I don’t recall have one member of the public maintain a raised voice with me, and I would positively enjoy the challenge of appeasing angry Direct Debit customers and answering the questions of confused soles.

Where am I going with this? Well, now days I work with a Christian NGO. I have a ‘ministry’. Surely this is the summit of wellbeing? Not quite. That nagging voice saying I’m not pulling my weight is present and the words I heard at my UCCF interview that “I’m hard on myself” are there also. We are a massively complex organisation that is present in over 70 countries around the world, with a workforce from about as many countries. We do fantastic work with local populations in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, with never quite enough financial resources. Every now and then there are hurdles and disappoints, difficult conversations, difficult e-mails, misunderstood cross-cultural phone calls and more besides that can be used to eat away at myself and my colleagues.

So besides the obvious needs for regular prayer and the need for a correct view of myself from Scripture, what new insight do I have to offer on the topic? This:

My ministry here and now, is my life here and now. The ways I mix with those around me – Kenyan and expatriate. The way I look to be generous with my time, and with my finances. If I come home from a difficult day at the office, I am thankful that I can at least see the fruit of God bringing me here in other corners of my life.

As I was thinking this all through, these words from the Bible were the ones I came to. I may already have a ministry, but this is the full scale of my ministry and of the churches’ as a whole:

Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Matthew Chapter 25, verses 34-40