Day 10 - 11

Today I saw God’s hope for Sudan. I looked into the clear, black eyes of the young men who are students in the secondary school. I saw their earnest desire to follow God and to choose obedience over personal gain. They have already sacrificed much to be here. They have chosen to be away from their families for months at a time to study and learn to become godly leaders.

I see in their eyes a longing for peace in Sudan. They talk of peace, pray for peace and dream about peace. Today Anter, the geography teacher, prayed, “Our ears are tired of hearing gun shots and our feet are tired of running to safety.” Peace is only possible when people not only look out for their own interests but also for the interests of others.

Someone might shoot me if he wants my shirt unless I first say, “Here, please take my coat as well.” A man who lives with abandonment as if to lose his very life will in the end save it. This way of living in the world makes absolutely no sense to self-centered people who rob the poor and leave them for dead. There are people like that in the Sudan. There are people like that in America. They are after their own gain and peace is not a friend to them.

So this is Sudan. It is not unlike Nineveh in the story of Jonah or in the book of Nahum. The choice is the same as it was thousands of years ago. People will repent and follow God or they will destroy one another.

Our choice in America is very similar. We cannot serve God and money at the same time. Serving money makes us weak and fat, and we crave amusement instead of God. Our thinking is no longer transformational but is conformed to the ways of the world. When investments fail, we worry about tomorrow. Will we have enough? In the Sudan people hope there will be peace tomorrow, but they also live very much in the moment. To live in the moment in Sudan is to have shade and enough food and water to survive.