The past few years here in Burkina Faso have been emotionally schizophrenic. With many the same symptoms, we struggle with the competing emotions of fear of jihadist violence and love for the people whom we live among. We revel in the joy of too skinny babies becoming plump and jolly bundles squirming on their mothers’ backs and the grief and anxiety of reading near daily body counts from the latest attacks in the countryside.
We grasp for balance as we ride the see-saw of emotions between seeing the transformative love of Jesus change despair to hope and then encounter the reality of the countless thousands of men, women, and children fleeing the swarming insurgents. We have one foot resting securely in the grace and mercy of God and the other in the bloodied shadows of indiscriminate evil.
We find ourselves alternately staring at opposing horizons. On one we are lifted up by the brightening
rays of rising dreams of expanding the Oasis of Hope; feeding more of the
countless babies and orphans who have no options left, sharing the gift of
literacy for whom it is not even a distant hope, and opening eyes, hearts, and
minds to the Scriptures where one finds real purpose and meaning. On the other
side, we can see the endless number of refugees, families and individuals who
wander to and fro in the fading sun-stained dust of dreamless despair among the
poorest of all people. We experience the
pendulum swing between joy for the living and sorrow for the perishing.We covet your prayers for those we live among and those whom we will never know. We seek prayers not only for all of the Burkinabé, but for the jihadi themselves that their hearts and minds may be opened to the Holy Spirt to hear Christ knocking at their hearts.
We seek prayers as well for all the unprayed for throughout the world, those who have yet to find an eternity with Almighty God through His son Jesus and who have not even one person to lift them in prayer.
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