Me: Sometimes we just need reminders.
Prodigal: Sometimes we do.
This is from the book Sister Freaks by Rebecca St. James
Dana learned early of God’s love for her and never doubted that He was real. In her simple understanding, He was her friend. Dana continued to grow in her trust in Him and His extravagant love. On her ninth birthday she made it official and went to the altar, asking Him to be her Lord.
The crossroads of her existence came when at twenty-five years old she felt God ask if she’d be willing to move across the world to care for little children in Africa. She had doubts. But she felt so full of His love, she couldn’t imagine keeping it to herself. After lots of prayer, her answer was s resounding yes! It was a decision that would uproot all Dana knew about God.
After many hours of travel, the young woman arrived in Mozambique, a country located on the dry, dusty, eastern border of Africa. Dana’s new home was in an orphanage, which housed at that time approximately four hundred children, most of them abandoned, some deathly ill, and all broken and hurting. A wild mix of intense emotions arrived with Dana, but she had ministered in some pretty rough areas of other countries and in inner-city situations, so she was confident God had adequately prepared her to handle that too.
Dana adored the dark-skinned people of Mozambique, soon loving them as if she’d grown up with their soil under her feet. Otencia, a little girl eight years old, was one of Dana’s shadows at the orphanage. She visited Dana daily, sometimes bringing bread and tea in the morning for breakfast. Each week she insisted on helping Dana hand-wash her clothes and sweep her room. Dana couldn’t believe how responsible she was for one so young.
The conditions were shocking, but Dana’s faith was sure. God wanted to demonstrate His love and care to those children. She and her team had many trials to overcome, one being that Dana became very ill with malaria, a disease passed through mosquitoes. Still, she considered that merely a part of the sacrifice–a cross she would gladly bear for Jesus.
A few months after Dana’s arrival, an outbreak of cholera, a very deadly disease from contaminated water, hit her orphanage. For almost two weeks, Dana spent days and nights transporting the children who were most ill to a tent hospital. There, under the tattered canvas, she lay them on rough wooden table, the only hospital “beds” available. Each trip, Dana saw them getting worse, not better. All she could do was watch as the life drained out of several of those precious ones, their bodies growing limp, their breathing slowing, their skin cooling. It was actually a tent of death, and each visit there dented Dana’s faith a little more. But she held on, doing what needed to be done.
Then Otencia became ill. It was cholera, and as her energy and strength faded, Dana faced the unthinkable task. It was part of her service, part of her mission, so she carried the young girl through the night, Otencia’s soft face held to Dana’s mixing their tears all the way to the tent.
Dana tried to speak words of comfort, but could Otencia understand? Leaving her there with those fawn eyes looking back at her–eyes filled with fear when Dana peeled Otencia’s hands from her arms, leaving her to lie on the table. Dana turned and walked away. Would Otencia make it? She could only hope.
But as Otencia’s cries faded into the darkness behind Dana, she found there was no hope left inside. Her soul collapsed in on itself, sucking what was left on her heart into a dark hole of doubt and questions about the goodness of God in the face of such anguish.
Back at the orphanage, death continued to take others. Apart from the cholera epidemic, AIDS, pneumonia, and untreated disease but claimed three more lives. The team had to continue on, but Dana cried day and night, “Where are You in the midst of this, God?” She endured weeks of questioning and bitterness against this God whom she had loved and trusted since she was a little girl. How can I ever trust Him again?
For weeks, the Lord remained silent. No answers came. No comfort was given. And then, in the middle of a worship service for the missionaries, He broke the silence in clear, unmistakable terms. Dana was down on her knees, on the concrete floor, when one of the leaders began to read from John 12:24: “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
As she heard these words, Dana felt her spirit began to groan deep within her. Before she knew exactly what was happening, she had fallen on her face and was crying out, “Kill Me! God, just kill me!” Dana was dying. She was dying to all that she had known before and all that she thought God was…and wasn’t. Dying to her need to know why; dying a beautiful, hard death. And in exchange for Dana’s death, the Lord breathed into her new life–and with this life came these words: “Dana, my goodness is never determined by your circumstances.”
In the midst of all the darkness, a new light of understanding began to grow. God’s goodness is one of those absolutes in this world of suffering. It is goodness that passes beyond all suffering, all death, and all brokenness. In His goodness, there in Mozambique, He brought Dana into a death of her own.
She realized that somewhere along the way, she had become convinced that the Lord was only as good as the events in her life. When life was all right, God seemed loving and close. When things felt as if they were crashing down around her, Dana questioned His motives, forgetting that He was the one who never changed. That’s why she had to die. Dana had to die to herself and all her expectations, so she could see Him for who He really was.
And as Dana died, she began to live in a new way, letting the Lord show her His heart even in the midst of such a distorted and painful world. He showed that while suffering and death had so overwhelmed her, it was His goodness that met those precious little ones at the gates of eternity. It was His voice that ushered them into the land of eternal living–free from the bondage of earth. It was His perfect love that kept many more from death and suffering during those critical days and weeks.
It was certainly His goodness that brought Dana to a place of spiritual death, she saw, allowing her to be raised to new life in Him. Heaven now fills her thoughts. She says, “How can I describe the abundant life waiting for us who are willing to die to ourselves and find real life hidden with Christ in God?”
Dana is willing to work and believe.
Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:2-3)
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
