Hot Heads

October 8,  2003

Hey my friend,

What a good prayer you have for commitment to wait as God unfolds “A Call to Prayer”.  You know I have come to realize that as He is William engineering timing He hems us in to wait by withholding what we are anticipating– so He engineers the wait whether we are patient or not!  It is all grace when we can wait without anxious chaffing and I know that is what you desire.  DSC01339 (Small)

I used my American clippers to cut 7 heads of hair yesterday before the clippers refused to continue– so I will haul the rest to “Good Boys” salon in Wakiso Town this afternoon and pay shillings to complete the task.  We shave the boys and girls heads right down to the scalp until their heads glisten in the light.   Recently one of the mamas went into the bush and broke off a leafy plant,   crushed it and rubbed the fresh shaved heads with it. VillageOnTheHill I asked why and she responded, “JjaJa, it can keep the heads from burning and even the insects will stay away!”  African hair is very coarse and the clippers got so hot after the 4th child that it was burning their scalps! DSC02181  DSC02083

This morning I will haul the 4 new ones to SOS clinic to get a blood test to see if they came to us with malaria. We were there the day we brought them to get them checked over and to get all started on antibiotic syrup for upper respiratory infections.  shopfront1.JPG  Flavia, housemother of cottage 3,  is believing that she too is having a relapse so we seek information for wise treatment today. I am completely in love with our new baby Chloe!   She got here on Monday and took her first steps yesterday!  Mama Flavia and I shouted with such delight that we scared her and she sat down and began to cry!  DSC00571  Thank you – thank you for tending to the things you have this week.  The way you have chosen to settle up financially is fine with us.  We are grateful beyond belief.  I am still not sure how we will celebrate but Casey seems okay with whatever comes.

She experienced some significant loneliness over the weekend and it was more painful to watch than to experience for myself.  This place is most fine but there is a point in the evening when you feel the loss of everything familiar.  God comes quickly.     We finally got a family picture taken for our prayer card.

That picture will always make me smile-we look so harmonious but James was mad because I woke him from a nap to take it and he still had sheet creases in his cheek-Casey was put out because she had come home ready to head out and visit and we told her she could not go to Melanie’s to play-I had just been on my back in that dress under a sink trying to tighten the faucet and was sweating up a storm?etc., etc,   DSC00333 The tree behind us was pushed over during construction and was lying side ways and growing ugly and crooked.  A dear guard here who loves trees helped us resurrect it and get it heading skyward again.  I wanted to remember his kind service to us.  Thought you’d appreciate the story behind the shot!
May God sustain you as you wait – the description of how He built excitement for the event when you could share about the information card that folks had received was priceless.  He will do that again and again.
You have my love and His,

lissa

He Made me a Polished Arrow

Helen (Small) Helen Roseveare had just graduated from medical school when she moved to the Belgian Congo to serve as a doctor to local tribes. She built a hospital made of handcrafted bricks, stocked it with medicines, and for 12 years treated malnutrition, nursed lepers, delivered babies, and performed amputations.

Her work there was tragically interrupted with the onset of a bloody revolution. On August 8, 1964, the Republic of Congo was plunged into a civil war. That day marked the beginning of five terrible months of savage brutality during which 27 missionaries were killed, more than 200 Roman Catholic priests and nuns were murdered, and nearly a quarter of a million innocent African civilians were butchered.

Roseveare was rescued from the carnage, along with many others. She returned temporarily to her home in England to heal from her anguish and to share her story.

But when this woman known by the nationals affectionately as “Mama Luka” spoke of her experiences in the Congo, a provocative question repeatedly surfaced: “Why did God let you suffer?”

The reality of a missionary, who laid out her life to serve God only to be rewarded with cruelty and suffering, seemed incongruous. Routinely people in search of answers unburdened their hearts to Roseveare: a young mother whose baby drowned, a girl who was raped — people who lived in angst, unable to connect the dissonance of life’s experiences to the God of the Bible. Her answer became simply to share with them how God had given her faith and strength to overcome her own heart-wrenching trials.

paediatric-600Invited to address the question of suffering with a small gathering one night she first quoted Isaiah 49:2, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He hid me; He made me a polished arrow;  She reached backward toward the mantel and eased a long-stemmed rose bud from a tall vase. As she spoke, she broke off the thorns, the leaves, the petals, the green outer layer of stem – every element that makes a rose and rose. All that was left was a lithe, straight shaft. The pieces that lay on the floor were not bad things. But, she explained, they had to be removed if she were going to make an arrow. God does this to us, she said. He removes everything – even innocent, good things – that hinders us from being the arrows.  He strips and sands and polishes so that he can shoot the arrow for his purposes at his intended target.”

Independence was declared in the Belgian Congo on June 30, 1960. Mutiny broke out in the army, the white population fled, and interracial relations crumbled. “It nearly broke my heart,” says Roseveare. “It wasn’t only in the upper echelons of government, it wasn’t even just in local government, it was in the church.” A colleague once told her, “Well doctor, we don’t blame you for being white. In fact, we’re really rather sorry for you being white. But at the end of the day you are white.” Her beloved friends no longer trusted her.  She prayed and fasted fervently, seeking God’s face for reconciliation.

Then came the rebellion and a terrible night that transformed her faith.

“It was a Saturday afternoon,” recalls Roseveare. “A truck drove into the village where I lived, and I could hear the noise from house of rough, angry voices shouting. And then two men burst into my home. That was the first indication I had that we were at war. “[The men] inspected everything and smashed a lot of my property, and then I suddenly realized that they were intent on evil. I tried to run away and hide, and they came with powerful torches, and they found me. They struck me, they beat me. I lost my back teeth to the boot of a rebel soldier that night. They broke my glasses I can’t focus on anything if I haven’t got them on. That was most frightening. When you can see them, you can at least put an arm up to take the blow. When you can’t see, you’re so defenseless.” During the course of the evening, Roseveare was badly violated by her perpetrators. “I don’t think I was praying; I was numb with horror, dread, fear. If I had prayed, I think I would have prayed, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” I felt He’d left me. I didn’t doubt God. I never doubted God. But I felt, for that moment, that He’d left me to handle the situation by myself.

cg-150As these thoughts poured into her mind, Roseveare became aware of a holy presence near her. “I knew with every fiber in my being that God, the almighty Creator, was there,” she pronounces with quiet certainty, insisting that God never gives us evil, but takes what is intended for evil and makes it good.

During the pinnacle of her suffering, God spoke to Roseveare in a way that He knew she would understand and accept. “I believe the words that God spoke to me, although I didn’t hear them as words, were,

“Can you thank Me for trusting you with this, even if I never tell you why?”

You know, that’s shattering. You and I think of us trusting Him. But the thought that He wants to trust us, that was something very new to my thinking.”

He gave her the strength to say yes and she prayed, “Yes, God. If somehow, somewhere this fits for purposes, I don’t know how, but yes, thank You, God, for trusting me with this.” God did not take away the wickedness, the cruelty, or the pain. It was still there. But He turned her fear into peace.

Roseveare and her fellow missionaries endured faithfully that long and dreadful weekend. The following Tuesday the rebels returned for her. She was taken away by herself in the middle of the night. As dawn broke, they came to a village. The rebel soldiers had gathered nearly 800 local men into the village square. They had been told they would attend a people’s court in which Roseveare would be tried for the things that had occurred the previous week. At the given signal they were instructed to shout, “She’s a liar! She’s a liar!” They would then be asked, “What will we do with her?” The mandated response was, “Modecco! Modecco!” which meant “Crucify her! Crucify her!” The defendant knew she would die, although she did not know how.

The trial scene began.

“They wanted me to go through in detail in front of these 800 men what had happened the previous Thursday,” Roseveare says, an audible quiver in her voice. “I wasn’t going to speak up in front of all those men. They struck me over the face with the butt end of a gun; I couldn’t stand the pain so I spoke up.”

The moment of judgement came.

Roseveare couldn’t see her jury; her eyes had nearly closed with the swellings of the beatings. But she could hear. “I heard a sound I had never heard before and will probably never hear again. I heard 800 strong farming men break down and cry.

They were weeping.”

Now, instead of seeing her as the hated white foreigner, they saw her as their doctor.

“They have a word in Kibudu, which means “blood of our blood, bone of our bone,” she says. “They rushed forward and said, “She’s ours. Helen2 She’s ours.”

They took me into their arms and pushed the rebel soldiers out of the way.

“In that moment the black/white division disappeared,” she professes triumphantly.

“I can honestly say, right through till today, in that area there has never been a black/white division again. We’re all one in Christ Jesus.”

When she fervently sought the Lord so many years before, she had no idea that God would make her an instrument in bringing about racial harmony.

Why does a God of love allow suffering?

For Roseveare that question is, in itself, a contradiction. Love and suffering are inextricably linked.

“If you didn’t love, you wouldn’t hurt,” she explains, pointing to her exemplar as evidence.

God loves us so much that He gave His own son to the Cross. Because He loves, He suffered, giving us an example to follow in His steps. (1 Peter 2:21)”

In the years following the brutality that she suffered she recounted other thoughts that were in her mind as she was insulted, cursed and abused.  “Suddenly Christ had been there.  No vision, no voice, but His very real presence.  A phrase came into my mind, “led as a lamb to the slaughter”, one outstanding fact seemed to dominate:  For my sake, He went as a willing sacrifice.  Then, as swiftly, He spoke into my heart: “They’re not fighting you: these blows, all this wickedness, is against Me. All I ask of you is the loan of your body.  Will you share with Me one hour in My sufferings for these who need My love through you?”

She looked back later on this whole period and wrote: ‘We learned why God has given us His name as I AM (Exodus 3:14). His grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time.

“He Gave Us a Valley”, Helen Roseveare, p.36,

“Arrrows in the Hands of God”, Challis.com, June 15, 2005

“Can you thank me?” an interview with Helen Roseveare, Tonya Stoneman

Soul Satisfied

dangerous-duty.jpgI say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you”…in your Presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forvermore.”   Psalm 16:2; 11

I pondered this verse this morning–quizzing myself about the extent to which it was true in my own life.  While reflecting on this same Psalm Sam Storms stated,  “Everything without God is pathetically inferior to God without everything.

Or as C. S. Lewis put it, “he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only” ( The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses,  p. 31).