Africa

I woke up this morning at 6:30. Amazing how early ones body will wake up when one had a good nights sleep. A good nights sleep is a true rarity in our house these days. Of course, it could have had something to do with the fact that there was a tropical storm beating down our windows. Not a true tropical storm of course. Having lived through Tropical Storm Allison, I do know a thing or two about real tropical storms. But, Houston has the most amazing regular run of the mill thunderstorms, or so they seem to Houstonians.
I crept out of a warm bed occupied by my darling daughter and poor hubby. She was curled up to him as close as a cat. He had somehow positioned himself so far on the edge of the bed I could not figure out how the laws of gravity could so obviously be defied. I shall let them sleep in peace. I thought to myself.

The truth was I was wide-awake and could not wait to curl up on the couch alone with a hot cup of Joe. (Another rarity in our house these days, solitude, definitely NOT coffee)
As the coffee brewed I pulled up all the shades up on our windows. I left the lights off and let the brilliant show of lightning cascade through the windows. About every 10-20 seconds I could see the entire span of the living room as if someone has shined a spotlight in our windows.
I was thinking about how grateful I was to be in this huge room with a kitchen filled with food.
I recently finished a tremendous book about Africa; more then once the author referenced storms that seemed to put Allison in the dust. The harder it rained outside the more my heart went out to the actual people living in the horrors of Africa. It was a spiritual moment. The Lord came in and allowed me to open my soul to our starving, beaten misused brothers.
It is such a good thing to be put in your place. To be humiliated by your wealth and circumstance is not bad from time to time. I could not believe that I was complaining only yesterday that my kids could not be sick one more day or I would go crazy.
Today, I thought, how many African mothers would long for their babies to suffer only from the flu. Instead diseases so horrible rack the lives of themselves and their children, I can’t even associate myself in the same world as the maladies that plague those poor babes.
So were does that leave us? Am I to sit in my home in desperation and guilt? No, the only thing I can do is pray. Pray for the darling children dying, pray for the grieving mothers, and pray for the fathers that are and are not.
Christ is bigger then that. He understands their pain, my own self-hatred at being born white and woman.
How to pray? They want do not my life of democracy and easy goods; I do not want their life of work and tumultuous terrain. I pray that they understand something greater then the pain that is inflicted on them and loves them. I pray that one child is spared, and woman is not violated. This is never enough. But, Christ died for all sins, that of the “savage” and that of the “white concurring savage”. It is hard to pray equally for both. As for one I wish to burn in all the fire of hell and the other I wish to rule in heaven. I am not so easy; we humans want to kill even when the law sanctioned the killing.
This was supposed to be a funny blog…..