Let Light Shine Out of Darkness
3 weeks away from home. 2 weeks in Uganda. 1 week in Kotido.
Where do I even begin? I don’t feel yet well equipped to tell you about the Karimojong people; they are a bold and vibrant culture, an ostracized people with a million variations between tribes to an already difficult language; they are friendly and kind, and they think it hilarious that I have a Ngakarimojong name but can hardly understand when I’m being called. Trust me though, it’s way easier to tell them my name is Najip (that’s na-jeep for those of you who are not Karimojong) and endure the laughter than to try and get them to say Eileen.
I live in a one-room hut, which is actually quite comfortable; just across is the kitchen hut with a lovely sitting area where many a quiet time has transpired, and many a morning has begun with prayer. My hutmate, Elise, is wonderful, and I’m excited beyond belief for the rest of our team to return to Karamoja so I can get to know them as well. It’s a beautiful life and I’m soaking it in.
(Elise and I on our first day in Uganda)
Many of you have sent me notes to say hello, give an encouraging word, and ask how you can be praying for me. I genuinely don’t think it’s possible to express how much I love getting your emails, and how encouraged and blessed each of you has made me. Thank you!
It’s been almost difficult for me, however, to come up with prayer requests that seem at all adequate. I feel like a blank slate, seeing this new life written, ever so slowly, upon a new and empty page. I’ve been asking you to pray alongside me for a heart like the Lord’s and more specifically, a heart from The Lord for the Karimojong people. I’ve been praying that The Lord would invest me here – even if it is only for 9 short months; I want to be all in. It’s only been 1 week in Kotido, and already I can feel Him tugging on my heart and beginning to answer those prayers.
Elise has this phrase: “Where there is no Jesus, there is evil; where there is no Light, there is brokenness.” And while I have no doubt Christ has always been here, He is not well known; even as we are blessed to see pockets of light breaking through the darkness, there is overwhelming brokenness. And the brokenness I’ve been witness to thus far comes in the form of children needlessly dying at the hand of witch doctors; of women forcefully and violently taken as wives and then expected to provide for their homes. Brokenness is the child begging on the street; the sluggard and the drunk passing away the day and its troubles with the local brew. But perhaps most terrifying is the brokenness that allows me to mount the high horse I have named Righteous Anger and trot straight toward cold, hard distain for those I see perpetrating injustice.
“For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
2 Corinthians 4:6
Now, to be sure, there truly is an aspect of righteous anger. Evil is evil, devastating and inexcusable; what a gift to be able to share our Heavenly Father’s heart in that. But it is ultimately never mine to condemn, for “Vengeance is mine…’ says The Lord” (Rom. 12:19). What is mine is to share also in The Lord’s great love and compassion, “for at one time [I was] darkness, but now [I am] light in The Lord” (Eph. 5:8). And after all, wasn’t it “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8)?
And so, being brought once again to the all familiar and lovely place: flat on my face and humbled before Him, I can begin once again to wrestle through what it means to be Christ to the one right in front of me; the broken, the poor, the suffering; the calloused, the abused, and the ones seeking to use. God, grant us the courage to love as You do, and the wisdom to see it through.
(sorghum – the preferred crop in Karamoja after which I am named)
eileendekker 