One wall in my room is painted a bright olive green. My bright spot of happy color, especially during Dry Season when everything outside seems reddish brown and dusty. Across the wall, are pictures of smiling faces – just some of the kids I have grown to know and love here in Uganda. While each happy photo seems, to the eye, to capture just one smiling moment in the carefree life of being a kid, I feel deep sadness and taste tears when I look at several of them. Their stories haunt me because I know I can’t fix their pain, or more painful yet, they won’t let themselves be helped. It seems that, from the young to the aged, it doesn’t matter – enter into human connection and relationship with someone, and somewhere, sometime, it is bound to hurt.
I have questions. About people, about how we love and hate and yet need each other. I’ve been mulling over this one for a while now (still fresh out of a concrete answer) -- in the creation account, the only time that God specifically declared something as "not good" was when he saw Adam alone. Everything else is “good,” “good,” “good,” or a silence about its goodness. Until we get to this alone-ness issue. This being alone? Not good.
And so my questions begin - couldn't/shouldn't God's companionship and presence have been enough to fulfill Adam's alone-ness? Shouldn't God have created Adam so that He was enough to take care of Adam's loneliness? Was Adam really lonely, or was he just alone? And then, the kicker questions for me - If God already knew it wasn't good for man to be alone, then why didn't he just create man and woman at the same time like he did for all the rest of the animals?
Sofia’s picture hangs on my wall. I was fresh off the plane to Uganda when I met Sofia. Sofia was a strong and vibrant 15-year old girl with a contagious smile and a hug that could almost (quite literally) crush your bones. And Sofia was a mother to a brand-new baby boy. I spent many hours with Sofia helping her with some new-mother health problems. I felt a strong connection with Sofia. I wanted to show her love when so many others around her openly disapproved of her poor choices in life. We became friends. When I saw her I would declare, “My girl!” which would earn me another smile and a potentially life-threatening hug. When Sofia struggled in school and was on the verge of losing her school sponsorship, I met weekly with her as one of her requirements of being accountable. She was guarded when talking about her life, but every once in a while she would open up and I would see a glimpse inside Sofia, her complicated family situation, and her anger towards her mother. Together, we were reading a book, chapter by chapter; the underlying theme of the story was forgiveness – extended from God for us and intended for us to give to others. So many people were investing in Sofia, giving her second chances.
Sofia went to her family’s village to spend the holidays this past December and didn’t come back to Kampala. By word of her other siblings, Sofia is pregnant. Again.
I hadn’t really considered this before – that Jesus’ life was full of people who disappointed, left, doubted, and betrayed him. Starting when Jesus was just a boy his parents didn’t understand what He was saying or doing (Luke 2:49-50); His old hometown friends and neighbors basically laughed at Him (Matt 13:53-58); His cousin, John the Baptist, the one sent by God to proclaim Him as Messiah, starts doubting and asking, “Jesus, should we look somewhere else?” (Matt 11:2-6). Two of Jesus’ disciples – men He spent an intimate 3 years with broke His trust in life-changing ways – Peter denied he even knew Jesus (Luke 22:54-62) and Judas was paid pockets full of silver to betray Him. When Jesus was in such emotional and spiritual turmoil, to the point of sweating blood, knowing His death was coming, His closest friends couldn’t even stay awake with Him (Luke 22:39-46). I’m not sure this list is even exhaustive, but you get the point – the people closest to Jesus hurt Him in ways that should have been unforgivable.
Rene’s picture hangs on my wall. It is difficult to believe that the tragedies Rene has experienced can fit inside the life span of a young teenager. She came into the Hope Alive! program orphaned and abused…and with the sweetest smile you could imagine. Rene embraced this new “family” that she found in Hope Alive! – one that included lots of friends her age and adults who truly cared for her in a healthy way. She didn’t grow up in Christianity, but was genuinely interested in learning about God and the Bible. She wasn’t a star student in school, but worked hard.
And quite suddenly Rene ran away from home within just days of finishing her final exams for the school term. We found her at an aunt’s house claiming that she wants to be Muslim and doesn’t want to go back to her old school. Talking to her was like talking to a person I had never met. Like a switch had flipped and the Rene I used to know was gone.
A couple of weeks ago I got the opportunity to spend an awesome week being a part of a missions team from Sports Outreach. For the introvert that I am, spending a week with 30 total strangers seemed effortless. We spent the week doing medical clinics, soccer clinics and games, and construction projects...6 hour bus trips with that many people in one vehicle should border on miserable, but somehow this group even knew how to make such an experience fun. We worked hard, played hard, loved hard, served hard, laughed, sang, and danced hard…in an effort to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the people we had come to serve. Towards the end of the trip, the team mantra became “Finish on Empty.” I don’t know how, but I had suddenly made 30 friends in one week’s time – loving life and Jesus together.
Irene’s picture hangs on my wall. She is tall and quiet, but her eyes tell you what you need to know when you give her a hug or let her know she is special. Irene still has a father but for different reasons has had to live with relatives, often moving from place to place. Quite suddenly, recently, a call came telling Irene she had to leave, today. Now. Some adult relatives in her village had had an argument and Irene had become a pawn in their game of revenge on each other. I won’t ever forget her sobs that day as she found out she wasn’t wanted and would have to leave everything and everyone she knew to move to a town 5 hours away. Her life had changed in a moment.
I visited Irene this week, at her new school in her new town. She smiles, but avoids eye contact when we talk. She says she misses her life and her friends back in Kampala. I feel like there is a new sadness in her eyes that wasn’t there before.
So back to Jesus. With betrayal both behind Him and the worst yet to come, we read this: “…having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1). As if all the hurt, mistrust, and betrayal had never even happened.
Do I have a point in this messy conglomeration of stories? I hope so.
I think it goes back to that original question about Adam. Why did God create Adam alone? Why didn’t God just create Adam and Eve together, at the same time? It is as if God created Adam for loneliness. Maybe, just maybe, it was that God knew we needed to know what it is to feel alone, to feel lonely…so that we could know how much we need each other. If God had created Adam and Eve in the same instant, Adam never could have appreciated the absence of her presence. We are created with an awareness of loneliness because we are created for unity and community.
In the book of John, right after his friends can’t manage to stay awake to comfort him and right before he gets the kiss of deceit from Judas, Jesus talks to His Father about His disciples (the ones who, at the moment, were sleeping). And about us. He prays for joy, for protection from the world, for sanctification…but again and again His prayer is that “they may be one, even as we are one” (see John 17: 11, 21, 22).
Ephesians 4:15-16 says, “We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
Created with loneliness so that we would know we were meant for unity, literally part of a body.
I share these things because I have such strong tendencies to hold back from engaging with people, to really loving them. I tell myself, “you’ve been disappointed before, and they will just disappoint you again.” Undeserved hurt to people and from people is rampant around us.
And then I see my Savior, who loved to the end. I feel the joy and wholeness that only comes from being with other people who love Jesus passionately. It can’t be experienced alone.
And so, my prayer for all of us comes from Donald Miller’s book, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”…
May we “fearlessly engage in a world in which love is so fearfully exchanged.”
