walking on water

Today I found myself in the middle of a crowded Ugandan marketplace, in the pouring rain. I put my hands strait up in the air and just felt the rain, worshiped and adored my gracious God who has brought me into this wonderful and awful place. I clumsily dodged puddles and slipped around feeling the mud in-between my toes (in regards to that, it seems like no matter how hard I scrub my feet, this red dirt will not lift its stain!). There is something that is awakened inside of me when it rains, I feel like a child again, and those puddles I was dodging, at any moment I was ready to jump into them. I turned to Betty and told her how I had dreamed of this day since I was young, and she laughed and said, “Auntie, why? It is raining.” We ducked in under a metal covering and sat on some dry wood, Betty took Kimby off of her back to let him nurse and I asked her to tell me about the North, and about when she was a child.
“Life was not so good then auntie” she said, “things were not so good.”
Betty had seven brothers and sisters, and they would have to run to the hospitals at night to avoid being taken by the rebels at night. She told me first hand the stories that I had read about, people being raped and murdered, young men being forced to murder and rape their family members and other just heinous acts of human rights violations. She lived in constant fear. I couldn’t imagine such a lifestyle. Her father was an accountant, and the rebels came and burned their house down and they lost everything. After a second time when the rebels came, they were killing people in her village, so she escaped and ran for her life, thinking the rest of her family was murdered.
The rain cleared up a bit so we made our way into a little shop filled to the ceilings with fabrics of every kind. Betty helped me pick out two or so pieces and we waited for the rain to stop again. We stopped into a pharmacy to get some anti- worm medication for Kimby, because, “Kimby is so silly, auntie, he likes to eat dirt”. Betty says everything with a brilliant smile, even “Kimby likes to eat dirt”. Betty is made of diamonds; she shines in every aspect of the word
Last night I sat with her outside of her room, and she invited me in, and handed me a plate of beans and posho (I have gained an insatiable appetite for beans while I have been here, I seriously can’t eat enough of them , posho is pretty much flour and water, it has absolutely no taste or nutritional value hah.) We talked about a few things and I noticed there was writing on her walls. I asked her what it was and she said it was silly things she wrote on the wall when she was tired. I took a closer look to see that they were prayers. She read them to me and I was brought almost to tears at the childlike simplicity and desperation.
“Lord, help me to believe in you.”

The bible says that faith is when you believe in something you can not see. The Jews had faith that the God that delivered them out of Egypt would come in
the form of the Messiah; even though they had no idea how or when. When Jesus feed the 5000 he had faith the God would provide food for them, even though all he saw in front of him was a few loaves of bread and some fish. We can’t SEE the holy spirit, but we have faith that He is here. I believe that an end to poverty is possible, but I certainly don’t have the statistics or facts to back that up, or even a plan, although, I do have faith in a loving God who will open the door when we knock and will give us bread when we humbly ask for it.
One thing I have discovered while I have been here is that faith, and imagination and creativity, they are all one in the same. To have faith is to believe in the unseen; to have an imagination is to “see” what is unseen and to create something is to bring life to something that is unseen, to make the unseen visible.
When Dave started Suubi, he had faith to believe that an unseen God hears the cry of the afflicted, and had the imagination of a child, that a way could be made for these women even though there was no “proof” that Suubi would work. Creativity gave birth to Light Gives Heat, and made what was unseen, visible. The stories of these women and their faith in the living God are now seen and heard because of faith, imagination and creativity.
The fact that a group of 60 or so Ugandan women are making a living off of rolling paper into beads, in our day of economic uncertainty is as unimaginable as Peter walking on water.

“But as Christians, we may choose to live by most glorious impossibilities .Or not to live, which is why in the churches, by and large, the impossibilities, the Annunciation and Transfiguration and walkings on water and raisings from the dead, are ignored or glossed over.”
-Madeleine L’Engle

A few days ago John, Julie, Melissa and I visited Rachel ( a Suubi woman) and baby John in the hospital. Rachel at one point had triplets, but a few weeks ago lost one of the boys, Abram. Now John was in the hospital. We walked into the ward and I was overcome with emotions, anger, compassion, sympathy, devastation. Some of the children I saw were so small, so sick and frail and helpless, their mothers looked almost as helpless. One in particular was an older boy, about 12, we guessed. His arms were smaller than, to be honest I don’t know what they were smaller than, but I do know that they were significantly smaller than they should be. He had a massive pot belly, (which I’m not sure exactly the cause of it is, something along the lines of gasses and stomach acids eating away the insides of the stomach because they haven’t eaten in so long) and his eyes were sunk into his head. There was no one there with him beside his bed as he was cried out for his mother, so Melissa bent down next to him and held his hand, she spoke softly to him and he just laid there, I’m sure just listening to her voice and not having the energy to respond. It is sad that some adults we have lost their imagination so much that the possibility of feeding our children becomes fictional, and watching them waste away becomes reality.

The next day we resolved that we would feed the hospital, or as much as it as we could. About 15 dollars bought an awful lot of mandaze and bananas. As we walked up to the entrance of the hospital, I saw a woman on a blanket holding a larger child. I craned my neck to see the child’s face. He had tubes running in his nose and in his mouth; he was making the most horrible noise. His breathing was so labored. It was obvious that he was mentally and physically handicapped. I immediately thought back to the scriptures, where in Jesus’ name the disciples healed people of all their infirmities. I wondered if I had the faith, the imagination to believe that God could creatively heal that child, through the hands of a white nineteen year old girl from who knows where, America. I imagined that boy getting up and wiping the porridge off of his face, and helping his mother fold up the blanket and leaving, but I did nothing about it, I didn’t give birth to it, the glory that could have been was left unseen.
Sometimes I think that the worst thing that Satan could take away from us is our imagination or cause us to waste an opportunity to creatively reveal the impossible. I presume that when a photographer sees the perfect shot and realizes his camera is dead, he feels the same way I feel now, looking back at that situation.

Fortunately, we were able to feed two whole wards of the hospital, and spend some time with Rachel and baby John. While we were waiting for the doctor to finish his rounds in the second room, John and I read the posters on the walls. One poster totally caught us off guard, a warning against sexual abuse. Despite the poster being incredibly graphic, showing a man pulling his pants off, while a little girl screamed underneath him, the fact that something that obvious needed to be highlighted threw us for a loop. I did a little more research and asked George, our night guard about it, and he said that it’s fairly common here. Again, It is sad that some adults have lost their imagination enough so that the idea of a little girl being safe and protected is fictional and rape with out consequence is reality.

So what is there to be done about it? How do we reclaim our faith in the goodness of a God who hears our cries, and how do we begin to be able to imagine a world where poverty and rape is fiction, and how to we have the courage to be creative enough to make it happen, to bring the unseen into sight?
I believe when Jesus says we need to be like little children, he is talking about this. He said to the woman who had been bleeding for years, “Daughter, your faith has healed you”.

No matter how old we are, there comes a sense of awe when we imagine a world free of sadness, sickness, and death. There is a sense of wonder when we think about heaven, the New Jerusalem, where God will wipe away all of our tears, and make everything new. When we try to imagine perhaps, bringing that heaven here, we are quick to excuse it as a naive thought, or impossible, unrealistic, foolishness, childish. When we try to find a creative way to wipe out poverty, the yoke of numbers, percentages, money and human time is thrown upon us, and we are willing to take it because it gives us an excuse to be heavy, grounded, and unfit to walk on water. After all, there is a storm raging. But isn’t that what Jesus prayed would happen? Isn’t that what his whole life about? Didn’t he say that his yoke was easy and his burden was light? Isn’t the folly of the cross what set us free? Didn’t he walk on water? Did he not come as a child?

What if this whole ending poverty thing, this whole bringing heaven here thing, won’t happen unless we have faith in Jesus’ creativity, unless we have the courage to be imaginative. It is written to be strong and courageous, do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you where ever you go. When you pass through waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through rivers, they will not sweep over you, when you walk through fire, you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze. In my name you will drive out demons, you will speak in new tongues, you will pick up snakes and when you drink deadly poison it will not hurt you, you will put your hands on sick people and they will get well. Jesus calls us to walk on water. He calls us to do seemly impossible things, and then he says not to be afraid. Last time someone tried to shake things up, start a new kind of way of life based on forgiveness, equality, peace and rights for the poor, He was crucified; you’d think Jesus would know that story. That’s just it, He’s calling us into that revolution, it’s that important, and it is totally impossibly possible.

So back to faith, and believing in the unseen, having the courage to be creative and child enough to imagine the impossible.
The week before I got here, the Suubi women were told that they would be making ten necklaces a week. They celebrated and rejoiced and praised God. Their prayers were being answered, thunder was rumbling in the desert, promising showers of provision. God is using creativity to make a river in the desert, a way strait in the wilderness.

So I stood there in the market, and just let myself feel the rain. It was almost an invitation, “Remember when you were a child? When impossible things were possible? Remember when you were free to imagine that the world could be a beautiful place?” I don’t see why it cant be possible again, after all, to be a child again, I don’t have to climb back into my mothers womb, all I have to do is believe, believe in silly things like the wind and walking on water.