One morning while in Ethiopia I looked out of our room at the guest home, and the view struck me as appropriate for so much of what we were feeling those first few days of our trip. We were not traveling with any other families and were the only guests staying at our particular guest house- isolation and loneliness were starting to hang around uninvited. Going back and forth between guest home and transition home to visit Lulu left us experiencing Africa from inside diesel vans on crowded city streets and within cement walls guarded by barbed-wire. Needless to say, it was not exactly what we had envisioned and I suppose it was our own personal culture shock. As I grabbed my phone to snag a photo or two to remember these walls crowding out the beauty just beyond them I thought about our daughter, and those million just like her, watching life pass with maybe only a pocket of viewable sky shining in each day, or maybe no sky at all.
I am reminded of this view again today, as hearts strain under weight of the hard-pressed path we continue to find ourselves on. For another week has passed without the news we dream of, and another long three days of guaranteed silence is upon us. I am also reminded of Joseph, unjustly imprisoned in a foreign land, isolated, aching for rescue, yet never complaining, faithfully maintaining integrity and honor for his God. Even after the cupbearer’s forgotten promise and two more years of no word, no rescue, Joseph never shook fists at God nor believed the lie he had been forgotten there inside those prison walls. Or that rescue was for someone else more deserving. No complaints- for years- only faithfulness. To know God’s love so well and find it so familiar that even from within the walls of our own personal prisons, we may still breath in and breath out and wait in peace? That is the place I seek. Walls all around, eyes lifted up to light, breathing in and breathing out, remaining faithful.
