An Easter Reflection

Death.  Not generally a topic during polite,   dinner-party conversation.  It is, however, a realty for everyone, and it’s brought into stark, unsterilized focus in our rural village.  Last week, a 15-year-old neighbor girl died after giving birth to her first child.  Her 19-year-old “husband”—they were never married but living in a Come We’ll Stay arrangement—didn’t notice the warning signs until it was too late.

Another neighbor lost her third child at just a few weeks old.  We stopped by to offer our condolences.  We didn’t notice the small bundle wrapped in a blanket and lying on the mud floor of the hut until we nearly tripped over it.  Corpse of the babe.  Mother sitting in the same room with it since the moment of death.  The funeral was held in the backyard where the babe’s body was buried.

Why such morbid thoughts at the beginning of spring: symbol of the cycles of life and time of beginnings and new birth?  Because it’s on my mind after losing our young neighbors.  And  because during the Easter season, I recall another death.  Death significant for the masses of humanity.  Gentle God-man wrapped in human flesh and sent to an unbelieving and cruel world to save us from ourselves.  To teach us love as we showed him none. 

As we’re reminded at this time of year, Jesus was not murdered or martyred.  He willingly gave up his life to achieve the salvation of those souls who confess him as the Son of God and believe.  There were three long and terrible days when the world believed Jesus to be dead.  Some mocked and sneered.  Others cried.  Dark, dismal days of distress and  defeat for followers who expected a triumphal victory.  Thank God, the story doesn’t end there.  It never did.

When Romans 8:28 admonishes us that “God works all things    together for good,” the verse really means all things.  Imagine the confusion of the men who followed the Master.  His death was good?  If he hadn't died, we would all be without hope. Imperfect law-breakers.  But the law was never intended for us to keep.  Instead, it reveals our hearts and our need of a Savior.

Savior defied death.  “I have seen the Lord!” Mary proclaimed to men of unbelief.  He conquered death, and through that act offers us eternal life.

Our 15-year-old neighbor’s body is lying in a grave, and the babe, too.  But their souls live.  We are all creatures of eternity.  The question, where will it be spent?

As Jesus stretched his injured hand to Thomas, so he stretches it to each of us.  Do we turn away,       unbelieving, or do we proclaim with Mary, I have seen the Lord!?  Regardless of what we choose to believe, the fact remains.  Jesus Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed.

Too Young to Die?

I don’t think it ever becomes easy to watch a child suffer—God help us if it does.  We’re watching Sharon, our 10-year-old newcomer, die a slow death from the HIV infection that has a stranglehold on her life’s blood.  Isn't 10 too young to die?

We have other children with HIV.  We almost lost a boy in 2010 to the virus.  We stood by helplessly and watched as his body wasted to skeletal proportions.  When he was in the hospital, he couldn’t sit up on his own.  His body was wracked with coughs from TB, a common side-affect of a weakened  immune system.  When I would help him to a sitting position his head, so large for a wasted frame, would loll like the head of a newborn.  Body too weak to support its weight.

That case was different, though.  Sammy was sick because his body had become dangerously weak before doctors allowed him to begin a regimen of ARVs (Anti-Retroviral drugs).  Once the ARVs began to do their work in his body, he grew strong.  Now, you’d never guess he had flirted, for weeks, at death’s door.

Until now, our experience with HIV has been that if the body is given proper drugs, a person can live for years with few to no symptoms.  That was before Sharon came to live with us.  She’s  taking ARVs, but the virus that courses through her veins is killing her anyway.  

One moment, she’s walking home from school, the next she’s passed-out in the dust on the road.  More than once, the children have run home to tell us Sharon is lying on the road.  Young Ones unaware of the seriousness of their friend’s illness. 

We’ve carried her limp from the road-side, from school, from church.  When she regains consciousness, she has labored breathing and fatigue.  Some days, she stays home from school because of headache and fever.  We’re learning to this aggressive virus no one is too young to die.

So we pray.  We wait expectantly for a miracle.  And we trust that, “in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Not  because it’s an appropriate scripture for the situation, but because we have experienced the truth of it.  Even in our darkest moments, when we don’t understand, God is at work.  Working all for good.

Climbing to New Heights

Do you remember the wild freedom of running barefoot and climbing trees during your childhood summers?  If you grew up in the city, you probably missed out on such simple joys.  Activities like basketball or dodgeball probably took the place of climbing trees in naked feet.  There’s something special, though, about hoisting yourself into the embrace of a tree, the rough bark unyielding underfoot.

I was down by the garden one lazy Saturday afternoon, when I thrilled to see these boys enjoying themselves in the branches of a perfect climbing tree.  Their lively chatter and laughter confirmed that they were enjoying themselves as much as I did during my long-ago summer climbs.  Noted, too, were their requisite bare-feet dangling high above the earth below.

Some of these boys come from seriously troubled backgrounds.  One of them was the youngest member of a child-headed household for a few years before he came to live with us.  He can recall nights of being fearful for his safety and days of  wondering if he would have food for his next meal.  When he and his brother and sisters arrived at The Hope Center, they were like little adults.  They didn’t understand the concept of play time; with all the responsibility they shouldered, they never had time to play before.  Gradually, they have begun reclaiming their childhoods, and it was a triumphant moment to see the youngest brother up a tree as giddy and carefree as the other boys.

Come Again?

Inheritance, ahh, such an unfamiliar word to western ears.  Almost sweetly foreign—like the Philippine delicacy, balut, which turns out to be a fetal chick nestled in a soft-shell casing.  Yum.  How do we contextualize cultural conundrums for which we have virtually no frame of reference?

I was leafing through one of our girl’s files when I noticed her father’s date of death, which was a healthy two years before her birth.  Hold up.  Either her poor mom has the gestation period of an elephant (God forbid!) or her father  isn't really her father. 

After living in this country for three years, one might suspect that I wouldn't be so green about such things.  But inheritance just didn’t figure anywhere on my radar screen.  Innocently, I asked our social worker to explain how this “orphan” could be an orphan if her father died well over 9-months before she was born.  He was quick to assure me that she was, indeed, an orphan, because her father’s brother who had inherited her mom, although technically the father of the child, really isn't the father of the child.  Come again?

     ?

According to Kenyan custom, once a woman is widowed, she can be inherited by her husband’s male kin, but she is forever considered a widow after the passing of her husband. Any children fathered after her husband’s death are still considered the children of her dead spouse.  

So the man who fathered the child is considered the uncle and not the father, leaving the child an orphan at the death of her mother.  And the mother’s dead husband, who obviously didn’t have anything to do with the conception, is the “father.”

Now, if you’re slightly confused by this whole explanation, you’re not alone.  Westerners, however, might be alone in their consternation at the concept of inheritance, which has been around and active in numerous eastern countries since biblical times.

While it seems to work for the rural villagers here, westerners can breath a collective sigh of relief that inheritance is decidedly uncustomary in our culture.  Much like that coveted Philippine delicacy, balut.