Reality Check...Another Look At Swaziland Statistics

I recently read that if you are a 15 year old in Swaziland, your chances of living to the age of 32 are 6%! SIX PERCENT!!! Translated...that means your chances of dying before you turn 32 are 94%. You are probably more likely to be struck by lightning or attacked by a hippo than live to be 32 if you live in Swaziland...all because of the AIDS crisis. Of the 900,000 people in the country, the orphan population is closing in on 200,000. And half of all 20 somethings have AIDS already. But the one that hits me hardest is the first statistic....6 %!
To put this into perspective, there are about 300 kids at the school across from where I will be staying. We have just been given permission to go over each week to teach these elementary aged kids about God's love...but reality is still there. According to that first statistic, only about 18 of those kids will live to be 32...meaning that 282 of the kids I will be spending time with this fall will probably die of AIDS (or some disease like TB resulting from a weakened immune system) before they are my age! God, have mercy!
So what has God called us to do in this seemingly hopeless situation? Without wanting to be too morbid or a Debbie-downer, the thing that I keep coming back to is that we must prepare them for eternity. Yes, we can encourage them in school, help them set goals, encourage them to dream about their future, provide them with food, clothes, and school supplies...but we must balance that with the reality that some experts have said that with the current birth/death rates the way they are, Swaziland won't exist by 2050 because AIDS will have ravaged it beyond repair. And James' words come ringing true to my ears....

"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes"
(James 4:14).

And for children in Swaziland, this verse describes the frailty of life all around them, that they will be looking at death and eternity all too soon.
So as I go this weekend...prepared to love on the kids and the gogos ("grandmas" that cook, teach, and care for the kids at the carepoints), as well as those I will meet through house visits and other projects...in the back of my mind I will be thinking about the best gift that I can give them...the gift of the Gospel that we have been entrusted with. As much as I anticipate seeing their joyful faces when they receive any material possessions or food, the look on their faces when they realize they can have eternal peace and be with the Lord beyond this world is beyond description. To look in the face of a 28 year old woman who has "the peace that passes understanding" as she prepares for her death, to sit with a grieving gogo as she realizes her new responsibility of parenting her orphaned grandchildren...the only thing that can get anyone through those times is trusting in the sovereignty of God and the eternal hope that we have in Christ.
As I go, I hope to be used by God to pour into them, pray for them, teach them, and encourage them as if they were a terminally ill child in the hospital...because they are...statistics have given them only 25 more years to live at most. Yet I go hopeful, because as we trust in what Christ did for us on the cross, we can cling to the promise that

"the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away...for He is making all things new."
(Revelation 21:3-5)

This world is temporary because we were created for another world with unhindered intimacy with the God of the universe...and we can begin to live in that now!

Visiting Orphans

What effect does it have on your longings when you think that God says “true religion” is to “visit orphans”?

The effect that it has on me it to make me want to love like Jesus loved and not always be thinking of earthly payoff. Face it, a few kids are cute, but most street kids will be thankless, rude, dirty, diseased, scar-faced, shifty-eyed, lice infested, suspicious, with bad smells and rotten teeth. If we minister mainly for the earthly payoff, we will burn out in a year.

Jesus did not say, “True religion is converting orphans.” He did not say, “True religion is making orphans mature and successful adults.” He said, “True religion is visiting orphans.” Results are God’s business. Obedience is ours. Perhaps when we grasp this, we will be freed from our earth-bound way of thinking and released to minister to the ones who are least likely to thank us.
~ J. Piper (www.desiringgod.org)

Go From....Go To

A lot of people have asked how God has called me to this place in life of going back to Swaziland, so here's the abbreviated version of it.
In October of 2008, I was running one evening after work and God revealed to me at that time that I was going to be stepping down from my full time ministry position. It wasn’t an “if” anymore, but a “when”. During that same run, He led me to think of Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you.’” Little did I know at the time how God would bring that verse to reality in my life! Over then next 3 years, God led me out of that full time position, brought Swaziland to the forefront of my mind (when before I never knew it was a country), led me to spend time serving Him in there, and even had me spend 3 months of my life helping pack up our family farm to move off the land. And now here I am almost exactly 3 years later, preparing to go over to Africa for several weeks in order to continue praying about what it might look like to serve full time on the mission field.
As I go from my father's land to a land that God has shown me, my trust is in the unchanging One who is sovereign over all times & places.

Long Time, No Blog....But That's Changing

It has been a long time since I have blogged, not because I haven’t had anything to write about, but because it has been so much stuff that has been so close to my heart! Someone once said, “I write while I learn, I learn while I write” and that has been true in my journals and my relationship with God, but for the past 6 months, those things that He has been teaching me have been intense and at times left me too tender to process with anyone except for Him. One of my biggest struggles with blogging is that I don’t want to put out there for all to see some of the things that God has done in my heart that are to stay just between Him & I. Luke 1:66, 2:19, and 2:51 all talk about people laying things up in their hearts, pondering them in their hearts, storing them in their hearts as the miraculous event of God becoming flesh in the baby Jesus was occurring. As God has led me through processing a few specific things in the last 6 months, my heart has been tender because of it and not ready to share. But as I move forward into this next season of life, I want to begin to share through this blog for a few reasons.
~ To give you a glimpse of the ways that God is revealing His faithfulness & character through my life, so that you might praise Him also.
~ To let people know what’s going on in my life and how you can be praying.
~ To tell the story of how God is working out His redemptive love in tangible ways for His glory.

Profile of the Lukewarm

As I was sipping my lukewarm coffee this morning, I was reminded of Revelation 3:16, where God describes the stagnant faith of one of the seven churches. Francis Chan lists out the characteristics of a Lukewarm Christian in his book "Crazy Love" and they are good to reflect on as we can so easily slip into comfortable Christianity.

Lukewarm people:
1. attend church fairly regularly
2. give their money to charity and to the church...as long as it doesn’t impinge on their standard of living.
3. tend to choose what is popular over what is right when they are in conflict.
4. don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.
5. are moved by stories of people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act
6. rarely share their faith with their neighbors, coworkers, or friends.
7. gauge their morality or “goodness” by comparing themselves to the secular world.
8. say they love Jesus, and that He is a part of their lives...but only a part
9. love God but they do not love Him with all of their heart, soul, and strength
10. love others but do not seek to love others as much as they love themselves.
11. will serve God and others, but there are limits to how far they will go or how much time, money, and energy they are willing to give.
12. think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven.
13. are thankful for their luxuries and comforts, and rarely consider trying to give as much as possible to the poor.
14. do what is necessary to keep themselves from feeling too guilty.
15. are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control.
16. feel secure because they attend church, made a profession of faith, were baptized, come from a Christian family, vote Republican, or live in America.
17. do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to.
18. probably drink and swear less than average, but besides that, they really aren’t very different from your typical unbeliever.

Known By God

I will admit that I have a growing fascination with other languages. Maybe it's because of the exposure I have had to several now, or maybe it's the fact that my eyes are being opened to a depth in the meaning of words in other languages. For instance, in English, we have one word for love, while the Greek language has several words to convey different types of love.
The word that I have been chewing on for a year now is Nolwazi, a Siswati word meaning "God has known her from the womb". I first encountered this word when a young girl that I met last year in Swaziland named her daughter this. God has known her from the womb....this young baby was born as a product of incest and rape, and is destined to live a tough life in Swaziland...yet God has known her from the womb.I have been thinking about it lately, because my new nephew was (finally) born this week, after months of anticipation, and a couple of weeks of impatient waiting! As I have prayed for this little one, I have been overcome by the fact that God has known him from the womb. I love how Psalm 139 reminds us that even before we are born, God has ordained every one of our days! As I have been working on a blanket for my nephew, I was reminded of how the Psalmist continues to talk about the fact that God knit our parts together in our mother's womb. God knows the passions & dreams He will put on my nephews heart; God knows the ways He has wired my new nephew to bring Him glory & tell people about Him!And I am humbled and amazed by this even more today, as I celebrate my own birthday - that 31 years ago, when I was in my mother's womb and my parents were anticipating the birth of a 7lb baby boy, and out came a 10 lb baby girl, God knew me. He knew the unique ways He would wire me, the ways He would pursue me, the ways He would lead me through trials and hardships in order to refine me and draw me closer to Him. He knew me from the womb, knowing all of the days of my life before one of them came to be!
And still, after all of these years reflecting on this, I still am overwhelmed that God knows me. That the God who named the stars, who knows how many grains of sand are on the beaches, who knows all of history and all of the future, who made the sun rise this morning, who created gravity and DNA, who is completely perfect and holy....that God knows me.

"But whoever loves God, is known by God."
1 Corinthians 8:3

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day, and if you're like me, you sometimes are numbed by the statistics and overlook the fact that individual lives are devastated daily by this horrible disease. Here is a great video that shows a realistic picture of what it looks like to live and die from AIDS in Swaziland.

And here is a woman who died from AIDS while I was in Swaziland...ironically, her (now) 2 year old orphaned son's name means HOPE.