I’ve been meaning to post some photos from my trip to Ghana back in August. This Sunday I’m teaching the college class at Memorial Road, and I’m including some photos with the slides. So I thought I would snip out a few excerpts and post them with some photos here. Enjoy.
Do you believe that there is such a thing as “good suffering?” How many of you have been on a mission trip? I believe anyone who’s done any sort of mission work can relate to the concept of “good suffering.” Whether it’s waiting in an airport terminal for a flight that’s had to be rerouted 14 times, or riding 14 hours in a bus to reach the people you’re going to help, mission trips and suffering just seem to go together.
And of course, the suffering you witness almost always is greater than the suffering you endure.
You’re looking at a few pictures from the trip I took to Ghana back in August. I visited a brand new Christian school out in extreme western Ghana. A guy named Augustine, who was working on his master’s degree at Lipscomb when I was there doing my undergraduate degree, is from this village and he returned home last year to set up this school — to give kids in his village the chance for Christian education that he didn’t have.
When I took photos of the kids in the village, called Sefwi-Debiso, I’d turn the camera around and let them see the image in the camera’s preview pane. They went nuts, screaming and laughing. They don’t get many visitors from the United States, so they followed us around, yelling “Bruni! Bruni.” (That means “white person” in the local language, Twi.)
We also went by The Village of Hope on our way back to the capital, Accra. They get a lot more visitors there. I took this kid’s picture, showed him the preview, and he just kind of nodded, almost as if to say, “Yeah, that’s great. What is that, six megapixels? Yeah, you know Canon’s new model has a much faster shutter speed.”
I don’t usually get in the photos myself, but this kid’s name was Eric, so I handed off the camera, handed Eric my Bulldogs hat and smiled. After the photo he started to hand the hat back to me, so I let him keep it.
There’s widespread poverty across the African continent, as I’m sure you know. This was the fourth time I’ve traveled to Africa, and it always strikes me as odd that these children are so woefully unaware of how impoverished they are. There’s a huge level of suffering in Africa — you see it everywhere. But someone forgot to tell that to the kids!
These first verses that we’re going to look at tonight remind me of the kids I met in Ghana and other African nations:
1 Peter 3:8-9
8 Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
“Do not repay evil with evil.” That’s much easier said than done. Compassion and humility are hard traits to come by, but traveling to Africa is a good start. I always learn a lot more from the African people than they learn from me.
All human life is suffering, and when our goal becomes the removal or avoidance of suffering, we fail. Peter tells us that we must accept that suffering is a reality, and all we can do in this life is to live the best life we can for Christ.
Peter is particularly interested in assuring that when people face inevitable suffering it will be “good suffering.” When you do suffer, make sure it’s for the right reasons. Don’t give anyone the chance to say that you’re suffering for your bad deeds. Show them that you are a model citizen in every other respect — except for doing the sinful things they do. When they ask you why you’re not like them, don’t be afraid to answer.
1 Peter 3:15-18
15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit,
Around the globe we have a number of modern-day servants who are suffering for doing good. A few years ago I found out through a Christian in Australia about a work he was supporting in Somalia in East Africa. You may remember Somalia from the ill-fated military operation we took part in there in the early 1990s. We were trying to help the people, but the warlords set up an ambush and we suffered several losses. I sincerely believe that what happened to us in Somalia kept us from intervening during the genocide that followed a few years later in Rwanda.
Today Somalia still is without a central government. People are living hand to mouth. For a while the capital, Mogadishu was under the rule of a group called the Islamic courts, which tried to implement Shariah law.
And in the middle of this tangled mess there’s a man named Abdul. I got in touch with him through e-mail and we started corresponding. He was converted through a Bible correspondence course and now preaches for a small Church of Christ in Mogadishu. He runs a small Christian school there, too. His life is constantly in jeopardy in a country that is completely without law, but he maintains his faith.
His story seemed too good to be true, so I was real skeptical when I started corresponding with him. He met with some of our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia, and they vouched for him. He even called me once from his cell phone in Mogadishu, and for the whole conversation I’m wondering, “Is this guy for real?” Then I heard a speaker crackle to life behind him, calling Muslims to prayer. His next-door neighbor runs a mosque, he told me.
One of the key reasons I believe that Abdul is sincere is that he hasn’t asked me for any money. I keep waiting for it to happen, but all he really seems to want are prayers from the church — prayers for safety and prayers to help him spread the gospel in Somalia.
A few weeks ago he finally did ask me for something else. Here’s an excerpt from his e-mail:
“We also would like to let you know that we need you to report us any prayers required by the troubled brethren around the world so that we may share the suffering with them.”
A man surrounded by suffering that I can’t even imagine ask only for prayers — and to pray for his fellow believers around the world. I don’t know that I’ll ever have the chance to meet Abdul face to face, but I know I’ll see him someday in heaven.
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