They Cried Out in Hope

14 October 2012

Fort Street Presbyterian Church

Detroit, MI

Job 23:8-17

Psalm 65

Hebrews 4:12-16

I have a million memories floating in my mind of the time I spent in South Sudan.  Some are glimpses that raise their heads from time to time.  Others are indelibly etched in my soul and have become a part of the fabric of my life.  One of those moments is a night in a tiny village called Renk.  It is on the border between the north and the south.  I was privileged to be invited to be a part of a Women’s Leadership development conference.  There are many moments of that weekend that I remember, but one, in particular stands out for me…

The room was beginning to settle for the night, the women around me were sharing stories, gentle laughter and the humming of songs were combined with one, sitting on her cot next to me, reading out loud from her Bible.  Slowly, the room began to quiet, and in the quiet, we heard the sounds of boot steps on the road outside our window and a sense of fear was felt in the indrawn breaths of the women around me.  The candles were quickly extinguished.  The women settled in their beds and a dark silence filled the room, along with the feel of breaths being held in in a complete stillness I have never felt before. My friend Annie, who experienced such a time as a child growing up in Africa, describes it as “fear beyond fear”. The boots retreated down the road and were quiet, and in the silence we heard the sound of gunfire in the distance.

Not a sound was heard in our room.  Not a cover ruffled. I have never understood the term, “black silence”.  I do now it is a silence that is so dark and so thick and so filled with fear it can only be described as black.  “Black silence” permeated the room. We all waited for what would come next.  In the darkness, the boots came closer until they stopped right outside our window.  They were followed by the muffled sounds of voices and the sounds of bodies hitting the ground..  We lay in the dark, holding our breaths, afraid to move, waiting, praying.  Waiting for what would come next, praying for the safety of whoever was out there, praying for ourselves and praying for each other.  You see, death comes in the night to their villages.  They are the lucky ones, they are the ones who survived.

 The boots retreated and disappeared into the night.  A collective breath was felt.  A cover ruffled across the room as tensions were released and from the bed next to me the gentle voice of one of our leaders began to quietly sing out in a simple praise to God for his protection. A quiet voice that calmed the fears that permeated the room and silenced the muffled tears from women around us; prayers rose throughout the room and we were surrounded in them and in the presence of the Holy Spirit who was with us throughout those long moments of black silence. In the silence that followed, they cried out in hope.

In those moments following the sounds outside our window, I understood for the first time the words of Job as he cried out “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; ⁹on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.”  I could feel the women around me reliving their fears of the recent past. Memories were bouncing around the room as they remembered times when “crickets” – helicopters -  in the air had shot down friends and family as they tried to flee the battles of war.  A time when soldiers crashed through their villages kidnapping their women and children, stealing their cattle, destroying their crops and burning everything in their path.­   The next words of Job cried out in the darkness, “¹⁶God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; ¹⁷If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!  I could picture them reliving the many times that they had cried out in hope for family, for friends, for loved ones.

I could picture them, fleeing in the dark of night, not knowing where they were going or even if they would survive the night.  How many times did they wish they could vanish in the darkness and that the darkness would cover their faces and hide them from what was to come?

Slowly, they began to offer words of comfort to each other and wipe the tears of those that had been strangers a day ago.  I heard the creak of the bedsprings as one climbed from her bed and joined another to hold and comfort her until her sobbing ceased.  Slowly, the room settled into sleep and as I lay there I wondered what memories those sounds outside our window, had conjured up for the women around me.  God had blessed me, in those few short moments, with a brief glimpse into the fears these women had faced for years.  I wondered, as I lay there, what memories those sounds had conjured up for them.  Memories that you and I will, hopefully, never be able to understand or comprehend.

The morning came and life returned to “normal”, a day filled with celebrating God’s love and provision.  Those women had come through the eye of the needle and never lost their faith that God would protect them.  They had cried out in hope to their God and were saved.  As we joined in morning prayers and worship I could hear the words to 

Psalm 65…

¹ Praise awaits^[b] you, our God, in Zion;
    to you our vows will be fulfilled.
² You who answer prayer,
    to you all people will come.

They are the women who taught me so much about faith.  On the last night of the conference, I was telling a group that this was not good bye, I would see them again.  Once again, I watched them pass through the eye of the needle, reach out in complete and total faith in God’s provision.  They understood Jesus had been their first, suffered their pain and would be waiting for them on the other side.  The one who could speak English told me, “No, don’t say that.  We will take what we have learned and go back to our villages in the Nuba Mountains, in Abei and when I go to Khartoum.  We will go.  We will teach what we have learned here.  We will die.  But we will go.  God is with us.”  They go forth in hope.  Hope that the lessons they had learned could be shared and hope that they will survive to continue to share them..

I don’t have their kind of faith.  How many of us do?  But there is hope and there is promise in her words.  There is hope and there is promise in their waiting in the dark of night for what is to come next.

There is hope in the words of Hebrews as it says “ we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Those words remind me to face the days and challenges that lie ahead for me in South Sudan with boldness.  They remind me that Jesus was there first.  He faced whatever hunger, fear, longing, lonlieness, frustrations that lie ahead as I make my way in a foreign land.  But the challenge is not only there for me as I go forward with this mission that God has called us to.  It is there for you as well in all that you do.  Go with boldness, Go in the grace of Jesus Christ who has been there before us.  Go in God’s mercy that promises to be there as our help in times of need. 

The life that I experienced in South Sudan is not always a life of fearing lying in the unknown darkness.  It is lives lived in complete joy and trust in the Lord, our God. They understand the words of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., in Kerux: The Online Journal of Biblical Theology (Reformed).

• "It doesn't matter how complicated, how desperate, perhaps even hopeless your life has become. No matter how overwhelmed you may feel by your problems, if your trust is in Jesus Christ, you can be sure that he is praying for you now and through that prayer he will provide for you the resources to bring you relief or enable you to carry on."

That is the joy they have found in their survival. The joy they celebrate every day.   Jesus Christ has provided the resources to bring them relief and enabled them to carry on in face of obstacles that are completely overwhelming and unimaginable to you and me. 

They laugh with an abandon we don’t find in our stress filled life as they live with limited or none of the resources that we take for granted – food, water, shelter.  They relish the food that God provides even if it is meager rations that come through the hands of the UN, WFP and others.  They are grateful for the simple, discarded piece of plastic and the few sticks that provide their shelter in the night.  They understand the gift that fresh water coming from the local well really is.  They celebrate the life of the man sitting in his hospital bed and not in the arm he lost in a fight.  They stop and watch their children play with a joy in their living that we cannot comprehend as they have lost other children to illness, death from war or kidnapping by maurauding soldiers and rival tribal members. 

These are the people who have survived all the atrocities that life can throw at them.  These are the people who have cried out in hope in their moments of being overwhelmed by their losses, in their desperation to provide for those that have survived along with them.  They are the ones whose faith and trust in God allowed them to cry out in hope to a God they trust will provide the resources they need, the Jesus Christ who will bring the relief they need and the Holy Spirit that will be with them as they pick up the pieces and carry on. 

They cried out in hope.  It is my hope, that when life is overwhelming to you that you will remember their stories and the stores that have been passed down through the ages in the words of scripture,  … ⁵ You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds,
    God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth  and of the farthest seas,

I pray, that you too will cry out in hope.  Amen

Charge and Benediction

I invite you to stop for a moment, hold out your hand.  Look at it.  Turn it over and look at the other side.  This is the hand of Christ.  Now, look at your neighbor’s hand.  It is the hand of Christ.  I invite you to raise them in the air, look around, these are all the hands of Christ.  These are the hands that leave all behind and follow Christ wherever he leads, to the food pantry, to the office to answer the phone, to sing in the choir, to visit the sick in the hospital, to reach out the homeless down the street.  These are the hands that will be with you wherever God calls. These are the hands of Christ that extend to those who cry out in hope. May God be with you all wherever you go. Amen.