Katie and I really enjoyed our holiday on Tuesday - it was "International Womens Day" here in Uganda and her and I were off from teaching. We went to Owino Market - a HUGE place with over 500,000 venders. They sell everything from clothes to rice to fruit to shoes, we bought our veggies for the week and found gooseberries there! We had Katogo for lunch - a Ugandan dish cooked in a banana leaf. At night we celebrated Shrove Tuesday with the Heritage teachers by having a pancake dinner.
I realized again this week what a blessing it is to be married to Katie and to be here together.
I also realized recently that I work all day with people that are going to hell. Each handshake and smile and conversation only served to confirm that reality. The weight of this hit me near the end of the day. Sitting on the grass, laughing with Patrick and preparing to play soccer with the Somali refugees I looked up to see them lined up. Eight image-bearers turned bronze by the fading sunlight. As they spread their shirts on the ground to prepare for evening prayers a loud cry comes across the sky - the call to prayer from the boziga mosque. I watched them kneel and go down for their prayers and couldn't help think of Jesus looking at the crowds feeling compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9). I wonder what Jesus felt when it says he was "deeply moved" - did he see the crowd in light of redemptive history?
I cried a lot the other night - the reality of being chosen, marked and set aside while others are not. A deep sense of unworthiness has pervaded me these last few days - and I cannot forget those that do not sense the nearness of His hand - the faithfulness of His love each morning. And so in these Lenten days we pray and wait and are filled with longing for others to know of His Easter presence.
“The mystery of iniquity is at work in the world during this interim time, and it is not always clear how its malignant work is being checked, overridden, or woven into the glorious purposes of God. We need to remember, though, that while Judas betrayed Christ, and woe to him for doing so, it was God’s plan that Christ was thus betrayed. Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes.”
~ David Wells
