I had obviously taken the wrong bus. I thought I was going to the Kenyan Museum of Natural History. Instead, I was let out on the side of a road facing a large open savanna with a few scattered trees. I decided to try again tomorrow, but in the meantime, the savanna was new to me and waiting to be explored.
As I wandered into the grass, I quickly noticed a woman off in the distance praying beneath a tree. She was shouting with a loud voice in Swahili with
her arms in the air. I decided to pray for her. Having no idea to whom she might be praying, I asked the Lord Jesus to show himself to her if she were praying to another deity, and to bless her with positive answers to her prayers if she were praying to him.
Wandering further into the open grassland, I discovered a large warthog who seemed quite comfortable with approaching strangers. So, I sat down close enough to share in his morning activities. After all, how often does one get a chance to share a seat with a wild warthog?
I communed with my new, multi-tusked friend for no more than a few minutes when the woman who was praying approached me and asked to sit with me. I said, Yes, of course, and asked her about her morning prayers.
A smile spread across her face as she told me about her relationship with Jesus Christ and her desire to preach the gospel, in America if possible. I quickly began to ask about the Lord’s work in her life. How did she become a follower of Jesus? Where did she live? What about her family?
I then heard a very sad but revealing story about faith and suffering.
She lived in the nearby slum; tin roofs covering cardboard shanties
bordering the prairie just visible on the horizon. She had been a Christian for about one year. During that time, her husband had left her and taken away her children. He and his family objected to her faith in Christ and wanted nothing to do with her. The children were forbidden to see her.
She shared one successive story of heartbreak after another, yet each chapter of her loss was punctuated by some declaration about the goodness of God; how much He loved her, and how much he had done for her.
Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me. The details of her story were tragic. While the statements about the Lord’s goodness were non-specific. I finally asked, “Can you tell me about one specific way in which God has shown His goodness to you recently?”
She paused. I waited. After several moments of thought, she looked at me, smiled and said, “My heavenly Father sent His one and only Son to die on the cross and rise again so that He can forgive me of all my sins. Since my Father has done that for me, what more does He ever need to do to show me His goodness?”
I knew in that moment I was sitting in the presence of an African Saint.
Here was a poverty-stricken, maligned and persecuted disciple of Jesus who was also filled with the joy of the Lord. She was daily experiencing the power of Christ’s resurrection and the hope of eternal life made possible by Easter morning.
She was suffering but not beaten down; oppressed but not defeated. The world had been against her, but she knew that Christ was for her, and that was enough.
That woman will forever provide a model for me to emulate. I have never had reason to weep as she had. Yet, her eyes and her heart were set on Jesus, and no one could wipe the overflowing joy from her face.
I pray that this Easter season, I will take a few more steps to becoming more and more like her.
