May 2017 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

May 2, 2017August 28, 2017

Solace For Mourning

My foolish act, passing an anguished mother along a roadside so I could make a preaching appointment, kept me stuck in long-term remorse.

For years I periodically revisited in my mind’s eye the awful scene. Each time, left sorrowing, self-detesting, grieved.

I had been given, at my own hand, a teaching moment of a severe kind. Any hearing the term good Samaritan thereafter drew a self-inflicted stab. If I had been a character in Jesus’s famous parable that Sunday morning, I was anything but the generous passerby readily lending aid. I was one of the other guys, the Levi, the Priest. Preoccupied. Dutifully religious. Hurrying to my assigned post.

Over time I gleaned insights – and healing – through my reflections as I learned to bring them, along with their pain, openly to God.

Interior questions got verbalized in one way or other. How could I have done it? What drove me to shirk responsibility? How can a string of roadway tragedies witnessed over time so desensitize a man to human suffering?

The hardest question to resolve went unspoken, even unformed. It lay churning within, begging a response. Do I find closure? Do I forgive myself?

In time the dark voice of self-loathing quieted enough that I caught a whispered message, a merciful intervention, surprisingly tender in tone. God’s voice.

I found that he had whispered it all along, but that had drowned the gentle voice by my own self-accusing chorus. His response to my inquiries came themselves as questions. Something after this fashion.

Was my mercy withheld from my servant-king who defiled a man’s wife then murdered him to cover his wrong?

Was not my friend who three times in succession disowned me not afterward commissioned as my trusted emissary?

Have not innumerable followers who have offended, failed and invited shame been welcomed, embraced and celebrated as was the prodigal of my long-ago parable?

He gently pressed on.

Were the negligent priest and Levite on Jericho’s roadway valued less by me than the assaulted man? And you, my son, does your worthiness trace to your own virtue, to your forever choosing rightly when testing comes? Does your goodness qualify your worth? Did my sacrifice at Golgatha prove adequate for the sins of all except for yours – are you the lone exception?

Through the questionings, and further whisperings, healing had entered.

The tragic roadway picture reemerges occasionally. But between me, that scene and a myriad others spotlighting my frailties, stands another image – of a cross-marked hilltop outside a middle eastern town.

I taste the nectar of deliverance and offer the one response I can, “Praise you, Praise you, Lord”.

May 4, 2017August 28, 2017

Death Valley

There in the African Savannah where acacia trees with their flat-topped enchanting forms dot the landscape, an adolescent boy, a humble cattle-tender, was cornered by thieving attackers. He made a futile attempt to seek refuge among his father’s herd of semi-nourished cows – the bounty his attackers pursued. Horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

Once I heard the news, words like heartless and senseless quickly sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the worldview of the tribesmen who had slain the boy for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any means to retrieve what was rightfully theirs was deemed acceptable. The “retrieving of cattle” was, to them in fact, a kind of calling.

Pastor Nashon had first been alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through grapevine media common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy reached our mission station several miles to the west.

Mounting my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike, I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring, securing it snugly beneath my chin. Pastor Nashon needed a friend nearby – even a recent friend whose culture and land were radically different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Mindful of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows I tried to push back my growing sense of inadequacy. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected demise of, say, an aged and dear family member can be daunting enough. But this defied categories.

What shall I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself process such news, much less console the grieving young pastor whose brother’s life had so recently been brutally taken?

***

“Bwana asifiwe.” Nashon, only barely my junior gave a warm smile as he offered the Swahili greeting, “the Lord be praised”. Though a common greeting among believers, the words seemed specially poignant (maybe less than fitting? I thought).

I quietly entered the dirt-floor hut which was poised on a high ridge along the Great Rift Valley. I took the seat my young host offered. My senses caught the flavor of steaming, charcoal-heated chai, its vapors loitering above the fresh-washed mug now extended my way.

What followed altered my world forever.

May 9, 2017December 19, 2018

A Curious Mercy

I take in the surroundings of Nashon Gibuke’s home. He is a modest man entrusted with the care of an equally modest gathering of believers, young in the faith.

By the time of this visit he had served as pastor for barely thirty months. Had received the leanest of biblical training. What he might have lacked, however, in polished rhetoric or formalized doctrine, Nashon more than compensated through a faith rooted in personal knowledge of God.

We sipped the chai, exchanging customary amenities in a softer, more subdued manner than usual. Finally I rallied my best voice to offer condolences. This won’t come easily, I guessed.

I watched the pastor. He seemed keenly sympathetic toward me even as he struggled with his own crushing sorrow. He brought a compassionate gaze my way as he leaned forward in his simple, primitive-like chair. “Brother Jerry”, he began “I want to say something”.

It was my turn to lean attentively in his direction. Still, his opening took me back.

“I forgive these men who have done this thing. I forgave them when once I learned of their sad deed”.

Was I hearing correctly? No hint of insincerity belied his low, steady voice. My puzzled expression invited him onward.

“I know that these people do not understand the badness of what they have done. They do not know. They do not understand. They need God and I have begun praying for them that they should know him and gain his peace.”
I sat quiet for a time. I felt an atmosphere change. And was suddenly aware.

Aware of God, his presence here beneath the long grass weavings – the primitive roofing matter of this Kuria hut. I felt transported to a far-away place, a sacred setting. The holy land. I was seated in Solomon’s grand and newly-dedicated temple of the Living God. I stood alongside Isaiah, trembling at booming angel voices crying Holy, Holy in the hallowed sanctuary. And considered the earthen floor here under my feet. It might easily have dictated with hushed voice that I remove my shoes.

I knew a reversal of roles had taken place here in Kuria country. I, the missionary-teacher had come to extend comfort, but rather sat quietly, while a young, sparsely-educated, under-compensated pastor stepped, so to speak, to his lectern. His non-sermon to me – his audience of one – conveyed with astonishing eloquence the message of an ancient grace. Of mercy, traceable only to one place. Heaven.

Bwana Asifiwe – the Lord be praised. Indeed.

May 11, 2017August 28, 2017

Mother

*today’s post is in current time, a departure from my usual narratives out of a more distant past. I’m in Africa. A ministry visit. Thank you for your time and for joining in special prayer.

***

Tanzania, my country host, lies mourning.

The bright young students held such promise, their minds fired up
for the day’s challenge. That was reality a few mornings ago. Before the bus they traveled in left the road.

I am writing from East Africa this morning in May – a month for honoring mothers. I’m the lone mzungu – white person, on a twenty-passenger shuttle bus, it’s occupants making our way from northern Tanzania to Kenya.

I silently offer thanks for our seasoned driver. “I’ve driven commercially since the 80’s”, he had told me. I’m in the front passenger seat. The driver is to my right as vehicles here use the left lane. Six hours more and we’ll reach Nairobi. Keep him alert Lord. Mist gathers on the windshield and he passes the wiper blade across the surface. It’s Wednesday. My mind returns to Saturday’s incident, down the way, beyond my lodging near Arusha.

The primary school students, 12 and 13 years of age, were en route to another school to take an exam.

Rainfall glistened on the pavement ahead as their bus descended a steep hill. For a reason not yet known. . a blown tire, excessive speed. . the vehicle swerved and plunged downward into a river-swollen ravine. Among the thirty six who died, thirty-three were children.

Join with others, would you, in praying for those overtaken by loss. The grieving friends, the siblings, the fathers, the school teachers. And of all. Remember the mothers.
©2017 Jerry Lout

May 30, 2017August 28, 2017

Signposts

The spindly lady of the Bluegrass State bought me time.

Mrs. Hottenstein’s sponsorship gift achieved what she’d hoped. Freed me to attend more to my college work at hand. And the extra hours away from the teletype keys meant added time with my young nurse-student wife. That meant a lot. Our ships-passing-in-the-night could sit a few more minutes each day in their common harbor – the thirty-five by eight-foot rented house trailer we called home.

The added margin freed me to drive northward. To a meeting I felt strongly drawn to make.

“Hey David, I feel I should visit my home church in Oklahoma. Special meetings are going on next week. If you’re free to come, it would be great having time together.”

The nine-hour road trip brought us to the sanctuary of Living Way Tabernacle, my place of worship from childhood. What followed set the course for decades of adventure to come.

Vigorous hand-clapping accompanied robust singing as organist Ragsdale’s nimble fingers brought life to the instrument. Monday night, first evening in a string of special meetings.

Rev. G.C., a pastor hailing from the deep south, was handed the mic. He was a large man, gigantic by any standard I knew. I had never met him. It was preaching time.

Over the past two weeks my thoughts had pivoted back and forth between two topics. An African language whose sounds I wouldn’t recognize if I heard it. And a phrase, leadership training. A seemingly random visit with a former missionary had spawned these musings and the themes wouldn’t let go.

Rev. G. C.’s deep, graveled voice thundered away as he moved deeper into his message. Rivulets of sweat glistened on his broad face as his three hundred or so pounds of Georgia preacher-man paced across the front, up and down the center aisle. His command of sacred text was impressive. His passion ran deep.

Twenty minutes into the sermon it happened.

G.C. paced into center aisle, his preaching on a roll. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, he halted. His head tilted upward. The pause continued. Then the preacher man uttered a single word no one expected.

“Swahili.”

I stared his direction, astonished at the sudden turn in his message. And especially that word. Swahili. The language I had encountered days before. I felt a mist of tears form, a hint at a gathering stream. The preacher went on. “I am hearing the Swahili language.” He scanned the audience.
“Someone in this room is called as a missionary to east or central Africa.”