CONFUSED

Today was not your normal day, actually we began diverting from normal last night…Around 11pm, not long after we went to bed, the phone rang with news from a friend of ours in Kiwoko telling us her sister had just died. At the same time Acacia’s pregnant goat began crying out as if in labor…Wait how to make this VERY long story become short, OK let’s try.  Today began with going to console our friend whose sister died last night, then going to purchase a coffin and agreeing to help drive to transport the body, driving to a remote fishing village where the person who died was hiding from an abusive husband (who actually killed her boyfriend), along the way picking up a totally different dead person (a baby who had died 5 minutes earlier) on the side of the road, (Can you say, Toto we are not in Kansas anymore?), smooth talking a soldier for him to allow us to take the short cut through the military base, loading the dead body in the coffin and putting it on the roof rack of the van, driving to another fishing village where the body would eventually cross the lake to the other side (another short cut), negotiating on the cost of the boat ride, sitting on top of our van (on the coffin) and watching our friend share Jesus with the crowd of young children who came to see the muzungu (white person) sitting on the coffin (on top of the van), loading the coffin into a small boat, driving the return trip of 100km back home, not without another short cut (which turned out to be much longer) and having lunch at 5:30 when I returned…Was that short enough? Oh yeah no idea why the goat was shouting, we still don’t have a new baby.

The lesson learned for me today? Sin kills!!!!! As Paul said, "The wages of sin is death.” Today I came away shaken by the deep despair that I witnessed in so many people’s lives. The death that initiated all this was so unnecessary and totally preventable if the individual had embraced the truth and “the better way” that God so painstakingly spells out for us. The desperate poverty and lack of hope that I saw in people who seemingly have resolved themselves to self gratification through momentary pleasures. The alcoholism and polygamy have created such a vicious cycle of destruction that is perpetuating the hopelessness and fueling the orphan crisis. The pain I felt as a grieving mother holding her dead baby (the one I picked up by the road side) rode in our back seat struck me in a way that I don’t want to ever experience again! Our world, as my friend said today, is CONFUSED! The very thing that we all need more than anything else is so staunchly resisted in our current culture. The answers to Uganda’s orphan crisis, to America’s moral turmoil, to the problem of militant Islam is found in God’s word and in Jesus Christ. Yet today our children in school are not allowed to pray in His name, our political leaders cannot side with him for fear of being non-inclusive. If you stand up for the name you will be accused of being a hater. The answer that everyone needs is the one that is most feared today. May God’s mercy and grace be on us all to navigate this “confused” world that we live in.