Straddling Two Worlds....

"We know that Americans pity Africans," he told me. "But sometimes I think Africans pity Americans."
"How so?" I asked him.
"Americans seem to expect that everything will be provided for them. For us, though, this ear of corn is a gift from God. This evening's rain is a shower of mercy upon us. This healthy breath is life-giving. And, maybe tomorrow we will not have such things, but our hearts are so full from God's provision."
~Jena Lee in Hope in the Dark

"While talking with a friend from Rwanda, I was struck by our global friends' compassion toward the Western church. In many ways, they feel sorry for us. They see our arrogance toward the rest of the world, our addiction to pleasure and comfort, our culture of sensuality and excess, which make it hard for us to fathom many of Christ's teachings- they see these not as evidence of superiority, but of disadvantage and poverty. They mourn our deep losses and have told us that they pray for us about these very things."

"We see what you're up against," he said. "When you have medicine to cure the dandruff in your hair and for the fungus in your fingernails, it's hard to believe that you need God on a daily basis. That's a difficult thing to be up against."
~Rick Mckinley in This Beautiful Mess (GREAT book, by the way!)

Interesting thoughts, hmm? Having been in Uganda for four months, I can understand a piece of what these people are talking about. When it rained, it was always a blessing from God, no questions asked. Even on Easter Sunday, when it rained for eleven hours straight, we couldn't spent the day outside like they usually do, and my sisters got soaked while cooking the family's special dinner, they came in and told me the rain was such a blessing from God because first of all, we needed more water that week, and second of all, the rain kept the drunks off the roads, which in the end, kept people from dying. The church service was interrupted because of the rain (we couldn't hear because of the tin roof). We had to walk home from church that day, twenty-five minutes in a downpour, completely soaked by the time we arrived. What was going on in my mind? "God, couldn't you have waited a little longer to let it start raining? Wouldn't it have been a much nicer day had it been beautiful and sunny?" (Not to mention that when it rained, it was a very hard task to convince my family to let me go outside to the pit latrine!) What was going on in their minds? "Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful blessing of rain!"

Each evening before and after dinner my family would pray. They usually prayed the exact same prayer daily, which was frustrating at times, but although their words were always identical, they really meant them. "Thank you Lord for giving us all one more day on your earth," was one of the common lines. We say that, too, I'm sure, but do we really mean it? There, where malaria, AIDS, and a number of other deadly diseases threaten their lives constantly, they realize the true gift that each day here on earth really is. They know God provides for them everything they have. They realize that what they have is not their own, but simply a shower of God's blessings on them. They don't take anything for granted.

Maybe we could learn something from them....