Help is at Hand (Sequel 2)

Help is at Hand (sequel)

(NB  This is a sequel to the updated version of my first post.)

“Ah, Mama, God sent you to that side of the river!” exclaimed Lizzie, my visitor from Malawi. 

“Yes, God sent you there so that you could rescue that man,” agreed her friend Suzgo.

Startled by their straightforward, unquestioning faith, I smiled at them gratefully.

“Yes, I do believe that He did,” I replied.  “But, you know, I don’t think that here in Scotland I could find the courage to say that out loud.  People here are so reserved.  They consider faith to be a strictly private matter.  Also, anyone suspected of any kind of boasting is frowned upon.  I can imagine many people’s reaction:

‘Who does she think she is?  Does she think she’s special?  Well, she’s not.  She just happened to be at the right place at the right time.  Pure chance!’”

Now it was my African friends’ turn to stare at me in wonder.  In Malawi, Scotland is revered as being the birthplace of David Livingstone, the great explorer missionary who brought Christian faith and values to their country.  Why would Scottish people not immediately believe that God’s Holy Spirit had inspired me that day to go to the river instead of the sea, and then to cross over to the deserted shady side?

Lizzie and Suzgo had come to Scotland on a two-week visit as part of the Church of Scotland – Malawi partnership.  They were going to tour round the various churches in Ayr Presbytery, and would discuss the projects which local church members had supported in order to improve living conditions in their impoverished country.  Their two-night stay with me had been arranged by Linda, the enthusiastic leader of my church’s Malawi team.         

A skilled hairdresser and experienced businesswoman, Linda became a Christian in her early thirties.  She had visited our partner church in Chintheche and had seen at first hand the desperate poverty and need for practical help.  Over the past few years she and her team had raised money to build a nursery and a grain mill, and had sent boxes of clothes, school stationery, solar lights, mosquito nets etc. 

Yes, our church is one of many whose members still recall and obey Jesus’s second commandment: Love your neighbour as yourself.

But, as my secular friends would swiftly point out:  there are many kindly decent people who have compassion on the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the lonely, and who do their best to alleviate their misery.  What difference would it make to be a Christian?

I would reply that then they would know that Jesus’s first commandment was:      Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.  (Luke 10, verse 27)

“But I don’t believe in God!  That’s just old-fashioned superstition,” is the common reply. “For God’s sake(!) get real!  Think of all the amazing advances we’ve made in technology in recent years.  We don’t need religion. This is the 21^st century, after all.  Anyway, how can there possibly be a loving God, as you claim, when there is so much misery in the world?”

Well, Lizzie and Suzgo are no strangers to sorrow.  Lizzie keeps a photo tucked in her Bible: that of her 3-year-old grandson who died when he fell into a septic tank. And Suzgo showed me a photo of her elder daughter who, as a baby, was permanently damaged by meningitis. Suzgo is trying to teach her to sew, in the hope that she might be able to earn a living.

Lizzie is the chairperson of 27 Women’s Guilds, who take it upon themselves to care for widows and orphans.  Despite the fact that many have no access to running water, the members wash and iron their Guild uniforms which they wear with pride to weekly meetings.  Every Friday they meet for Bible study.

Suzgo is a nurse. She told me that when she returned to Malawi it would be the malaria season. 
“For the patients who come to my hospital, we can do nothing except try to make them more comfortable,” she said sadly. “We haven’t got the medication they need.”

Both women are devout Christians.  They had brought their Bibles, and got together each day to pray quietly in private.  To my surprise, they speak different languages although they live only about 40 km from one another.  (Malawi has 16 living languages.)  One spoke Chichewa, the national language, the other Chitumbuka.  Sitting round my table we recited the Lord’s Prayer in our three different languages.  It was very moving – and thought-provoking, as each of us was sure that God hears and understands what we mean in our hearts, whatever words we use. 

Lizzie showed me her Bible and I fetched mine – the New English Bible which Bob, my late husband, gave me over thirty years ago. 

To our delight, we discovered a happy coincidence – both Bibles had the same illustrations!  We eagerly turned the pages to find two we could display in a photo.  Finally we decided on one of a hen with her chickens.  The artist, Horace Knowles, had created this illustration for the words of Jesus (in Matthew 23, verse 37)                

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that murders the prophets and stones the messengers sent to her!  How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings; but you would not let me.    

What a privilege it was to meet those two committed Christians!  The lovely coincidence of the identical illustrations formed a bond between us even though we live thousands of miles apart and shall possibly never meet again.  All three of us admire that Scottish missionary who wrote: ‘All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book’.

As for me, I pray that here in Scotland our younger generation, so beset by secularism, cynicism, cyber bullying, commercialism, racism, homophobia, mental health problems and even thoughts of suicide, may, despite all of these, come to know that ‘Help is at Hand’, and to trust in Jesus’s promise that after His death God would send the Holy Spirit to be our Advocate, Guide and Comforter.

He did.

                                                       Thanks be to God