where it all began in 2004

“Sixty-five hundred Africans are dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease. And it is not a priority for the West: two 9/11s a day, eighteen jumbo jets of fathers, mothers, families falling out of the sky. No tears, no letters of condolence, no fifty-one-gun salutes. Why? Because we don’t put the same value on African life as we put on a European or American life. God will not let us get away with this, history certainly won’t let us get away with our excuses…In the Global Village, distance no longer decides who is your neighbor, and “Love thy neighbor” is not advice, it’s a command.”
– Bono, November 2002 -

…becoming part of the solution…

The Bible records a story, in the ninth chapter of John’s gospel of a blind man who had trouble seeing life for what it really was. He begged Jesus to heal his eyes. God restored his sight and everybody in the region knew that a miracle had occurred.

The educated, high society of the day had many explanations. These skeptics argued that his disability was just consequence of his parents and/or his own sins. Jesus disagreed. When asked to defend the reason for this poor man’s suffering, humiliation and pain during all of his life, the God-man responded: “No, it was allowed into his life with the purpose to reveal God's work in him…”

On the last Sunday before I left South Africa in August 2004, this passage was branded upon my soul. It defined the unspoken question confronting me as an African leaving for a foreign land in search of greater understanding.

Is Africa poor, hungry and left desolate to suffer alone because of her own sins or those perpetrated by her colonial parents?

I believe Jesus’ reply would be the same: “No, but that the glorious power of the Living God might be revealed to all the earth.”

How will I respond to this challenge?
May each day of my life tell His story of sacrificial love.
May I inspire every mortal He sends across my path to put their trust in Him.
May I grow in skillfulness and influence to mobilize more souls as part of His supernatural solution to the needs of Africa!

For more information about how I started connecting my American friends to those in Africa see project pretty dirty feet on www.vision.givengain.org

“There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to walk through the valley of shadow again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.”
– Nelson Mandela, September 1953 –