She sits across from me, legs stretched out on the floor with her chitenji tucked underneath her. The lines on her face are smooth, ebony, but there is a heaviness in her eyes as they stay focused on the floor. She has never not been a refugee. Her story, like the many other women who sat down with me and around me, is one of incredible horror. Each story I hear blends into the other, all so similar in the hardships they portray. These women are the vulnerable of the vulnerable. This one tells me tales of men coming after her. Of men raping her, killing her husband, and scattering her children. This one tells me of leaving her country, moved from one camp to another, of children with little food to eat, and of not having citizenship in any place. In the camp she is not safe. She cannot go to her home country or she will be killed. She has no refugee status such that she can leave the country for another. She is trapped and she is not safe against the men beating against the doors of the mudbrick home she lives in. They want to rape her too. She cannot communicate with the medical staff at the one health clinic because they don’t speak the same language. Her children go to school in a classroom size that is well into the hundreds, and when she needs medicine, she must sell some of the meagre food she has received in order to pay for it. It doesn’t matter anyways, she only really ever gets tylenol. The weight of her worries are heavy on her shoulders. The resounding cry of her heart among many is “what will become of my children if I die? What future do I have? What future will they have?” And this world of the camp is shrouded by corruption and human traffickers abound. To leave the camp, is to be put in prison.
But; because there is always a but, this is precisely the place where God’s kingdom is coming. It is coming and it is coming in glory. What was once one and two converted souls, has become more than 11,000. In this place of little hope, of heavy despair, there is coming a wave and a wind of redemption. The orphan and the widow, the sojourner, the fatherless and childless are coming together in unity under a new kingdom banner and citizenship. Their hope is found in Christ alone. Though suffering would close the book on these women, though the enemy of their souls would want to have the last word, he will not win. Nothing can stand against the kingdom of redemption that is coming. I see it in the worship songs that they chant in passionate rhythm to a simple drum. I see it in the heads bent together sharing stories and meals. I see it in the eyes of pastors who believe and know that God is using them to bring freedom and peace and unity among people that are as diverse as the continent they represent. I see it in the programs they run, the ideas they generate, and the passion they exude about a vision that even extends beyond the camp to the rest of the nation and the continent.
You see, God is not finished with the refugees. This is not the end of their story. In the places of their deepest despair and in their darkest pits, God is able to redeem and restore. He is near to the brokenhearted, the crushed and abandoned, the hopeless and despairing. Will you pray for them? That God’s kingdom will come swiftly and for His mercy in their time of suffering? We wait patiently for God to come, to take the dusty earth and grow a flamboyant tree, and He will.
Greetings from Stuart & Elizabeth and your dear friends at Yorkson.
The picture of the two trees demonstrates in a most wonderful way the amazing beauty that God, and only God, is able to create in the midst of ugliness that sin has brought upon this world. Your very well written news update certainly identifies the depth of human depravity. Yet the grace of God bursts forth in such profound ways that darkness turns into an everlasting beam of light. Heaven will be filled with 10,000 X 10,000 people, all with a story and some whom you have had the joy of meeting and mutually sharing the love of Jesus Christ with.
God’s rich blessings with you always.