This is No Game!

    Y'all may be tired of hearing about my January trip to Malawi, but I can't say enough how much this trip affected my faith. Thus, I remember story after story, lesson after lesson that needs saying! So, here goes another!

    While at the training center in Nkhotakota, I was able to spend one day going out into a little fishing and farming village on the shores of Lake Malawi, going door-to-door witnessing with an interpreter. So I spent about three hours out doing that, then I came back to our training center just in time to meet up with another one of the American guys coming back from a different village. So, since neither one of us were tired yet, we decided to turn around and head back to the village we'd just come from and see if we could hit some of the smaller homes.

    We stopped at the first house on the outskirts of the village and were able to witness to a Muslim woman, then as we were walking into the village, a woman came out and began speaking to our interpreter in Chichewan. I don't know Chichewan, so I just kinda sat there and looked dumb (I'm really good at that; I've practiced a lot). Soon, our interpreter led us to follow after the lady over to this tiny mud-brick house on the edge of the village.

    On the way, our interpreter quickly filled us in. A girl at this house was sick, and her mother wanted us to pray for her. By this time, we'd been in Africa for over a week and were kinda getting acclimated to the shock of doing new things, but this one still caught me off guard. Anyhow, as we walked up to the house, it struck me.

    There, lying on a mat outside the little hut, was a young girl, I don't remember how old. I couldn't tell you know what she looked like, except that she was too weak to move. I remember as we huddled by her mat, praying that God would heal this girl. And I remember that was when it clicked.

    While we read stories of these things happening around the world, they aren't just stories. They're not fluffy little tales to make you feel uncomfortable. They're real world events, happening around us. They're not a statistic on a page or a number in a magazine. They are a living, breathing soul, facing an eternity either with God or eternally separated from Him.

    I'm not sure how much I can tell you in this article. Until you see a child's stomach bloated with hunger, or look at a girl lying on a mat, possibly dying, in a place with not enough food and no medical care, you don't get it. You will continue to walk along, blissfully ignorant of brothers and sisters around the world, who are dying!

    We're not playing games here, people! These are people, children, who are dying, every day, while we complain about the humidity and the rising gas prices. Real people, real children, who die, every day. Are you getting the picture?

    As we grow to love as Christ loved, we begin to hurt for the world as Christ hurt. We can see the pain evident on Jesus' face as He looked at wayward Jerusalem and begged them to follow Him. We can hear the love to the outcast in His voice to the Samaritan woman and the lepers whom He healed. And how can we claim to follow this same Jesus, and not show the love He showed?

    Tell me, how can we claim His name, identify ourselves with Him, yet not love as He loved? We don't even seem to care most of the time! The most we may do is utter a quick prayer occasionally. Maybe we choose not to discuss it because it's an uncomfortable topic of conversation in our comfortable homes over our warm meals.

    But comfortable or not, it's time someone brought it up. There is a real world out there, a real world of dying people. This isn't some sort of game that you are not a part of since you were born in America.

    Can someone explain to me how we can have a part of the body of Christ suffering in Africa, dying even, and we in the church can't even remember to pray for them? Are our priorities mixed up or what?

    A lot of people close talks like this with words like, "You can't ignore it, but..." Well, I'm gonna be honest. This is a topic you can ignore. You can pretend they don't exist, that they won't face God. You can pretend they're not sick, they're not hungry, and you can pretend that God never promised that the love we show to Him is the love we show to the least of these. You can pretend that it's not your job. You can pretend that you won't face God.

    You can pretend all that. That's been our preferred method for the last 100 years. But I am going to ask you not to. You know what? Sometimes it's uncomfortable to face the truth. So, while I realize we can't all up and go to Africa (even if that would end all their problems rather than just complicate them), you can pray. You can support people who are doing the work over there.

    C'mon, you teenagers who are trying to follow Christ! You can't follow Christ and not hurt with those who are hurting! You can't follow Christ and not show the love He commanded us to show! So please, remember your brothers and sisters in Africa in prayer. This isn't a fluffy little game. This isn't a time of peace. It's a time of war. And it's high time we realized that.