This is not the kind of preparation I was expecting. Tomorrow I will be heading off to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to spend five weeks working in local communities with the orphans, widows and the dying. There is, somewhere in the region of my stomach, a strange mixture of excitement and the heavy feeling of complete unpreparedness. I don’t feel scared or anxious, just unprepared, and I think it is that which is making me so excited. I love this feeling, it’s like the deep parts of me crying out to God – you’re going to have to take care of this one, I’ve got nothing! Absolute dependency = extravagant provision. God is going to do something marvellous, of that much I’m sure. The journey alone is going to be an adventure in itself. Me, our volunteer coordinator Dan and Sibusiso the Swazi travel from White River, South Africa (the place we call home) to Botswana where we will be staying in a lodge. From there the following morning we will head upwards and cross into Zambia, stopping at Victoria Falls and staying overnight in Livingstone. The next day we will hotfoot it northwards, stopping here and there at Zambia’s Hands @ Work bases then staying overnight in the copperbelt town of Luanshya. Finally, Dan and I will cross over by bus into the Congo and onwards to our final destination: Likasi, DRC!
I’ve been so preoccupied thinking about the journey that I’ve probably wasted a lot of time I should have spent thinking about the destination! Yet God has been giving me a little teaching and training and guidance along the way. Just not the kind I expected. This week I opened a book I have been reading called Beautiful Outlaw, a book about the scandalous personality of Jesus. It has nothing to do with Africa, nor had it yet mentioned it at all, but as I opened it I read the author’s description of what Christ means when he says he is sending us out like lambs amongst wolves. Putting words in Jesus’ mouth, he writes: ‘Take this seriously. I’m sending you into the Congo with a butter knife. You are easy pickings. You must be holy.’ Gulp. The author may have been speaking in metaphor. God isn’t.
I know that the Congo is an unstable place, but like all places of turmoil and torment it is also beautiful soil for a breakthrough of God. And the Bible calls my God the Master of Breakthroughs.
The Congo is a nation utterly devastated and utterly forgotten. Its obscurity to the Western mindset (I didn’t even know where it was until I got to Africa) is the aftermath of a tragic but muted past. Around 10 million people were lost to the rubber slave trade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, another 5.4 million lost to the Second Congo war of the 1990’s. But it is not forgotten to God – and that is so important! God is on the move. I really believe it. I don’t know why I believe it, I just do. It’s not hard to see in a nation so ravaged by war the footprints of the Enemy whose manifesto is to steal, kill and destroy. The poor of Africa are his killing fields. Sometimes it feels like the scope of the issues are simply too big, the roots of the problem simply running too deep. But that’s rubbish. Nothing can prevail against even the most unreservedly insignificant person that boldly and recklessly follows after the heart of God. He’s already on the move, leaving footprints behind him for us to track. He is teaching me that I don’t have to convince him to remember the Congo; he has plans and promises written for that nation that I could only hope to imagine. I’m just invited along for the journey. The Master has breakthrough in store, and I want to be a part of it. He’s written it on my heart. And I want every step to be holy, to carry the presence and peace of God. Holiness overcomes hopelessness. For now, this is just my first step into the promises of God, remembering as I go that nothing can prevail against you when you walk in his footprints, even if you’re armed only with a butter knife.
