Moseleb died. I
don’t even know how else to put it. He
died the day after I saw him and I don’t know why. I don’t get it and my heart hurts…a lot.
I went to the leper colony on Monday to see how his
arm was doing. I prayed all weekend for
it and I believed it would be healed. I
remember distinctly driving to the colony telling the other people in the car
how excited I was to see him.
When we got there, we were greeted by Janapai, his
wife, with tears streaming down her face.
At first I didn’t understand what was going on. She kept pointing upwards, but without being
able to communicate, I didn’t want to read too much into it. So I pointed towards her room and motioned
for her to take me there. We walked
slowly, tears streaming from her face and a huge gut feeling within me that
things were not right. When we got to
her door, she pushed it open and there I saw it.
Emptiness.
Where just days before laid Moseleb with his infected wound
and multiple rags, now was simply a concrete floor. The room was bare with an eerie feeling to
the place.
I turned, threw my arms around her, and just began weeping
with her. I wept as she wept because my
own heart so deeply hurt. Here, days
before, had been Moseleb. Now….. no
one…. except a hurting woman without the hope of Jesus before her to carry
her through this.
We went inside and I sat on the ground with Janapai. I cried as I rubbed her back. The more she cried, the more I did. Every once and a while she would look up,
staring out into the empty space of the room, clearly lost somewhere else.
After the silence and tears became too much, we decided we
would sing to her. And so there, sitting
in the middle of the empty room where death had just taken place, we invited
the spirit of the Living God to come invade every inch of it. All of us in her room began to worship Him
through song as Janapai sat listening.
Send you rain O Lord.
Send your rain, O Lord.
Send you rain, O Lord…. to your people.
Soften our hearts.
Pour out your spirit.
Fill us anew.
Let your rain come.
May your kingdom come.
May your will be done.
Here on earth.
As it is in Heaven.
After some more worship, tears, and silence, we finally
left. I hugged her, smiled at her, and
looked into her eye, doing my best to tell her I love her. And then I walked away from her room, eyes
still red from the tears and a heart that was broken.
I still feel broken by this.
I still wonder why the Lord didn’t heal him. Why He allowed Moseleb to pass away. But then I think of the glory from His
timing, that He brought me to him just days before His death. Oh how I pray in those two days, in the midst
of all his pain and suffering, Moseleb experienced the unspoken, true love of
Christ.
We still have no translator to help us speak with Janapai,
but I know that our God is so much bigger than a language barrier. I still go see Janapai every time I’m at the
colony and when silence becomes too much to sit in, we sing to her, worshipping
the Lord and inviting more of His Spirit into that place.
Even with the reality of loss and death freshly lingering in
my heart, I still can’t wipe a smile from my face. When you enter a country like this where
there are more gods worshipped than people in most countries. you realize just
how amazing our God is. We worship THE
true God. A God who personally loves his
children and longs to sit in that mud with them and brush flies from their
bodies. A God who weeps at the loss and
brokenness of this world, and yet has the power to bring redemption and hope
into the bleakest places. The God who is
Father, Warrior, AND Comforter all in one.
The God who carries all power and authority in Heaven and on earth. You can’t help but cry some tears of joy when
you realize the surpassing beauty of faith in the true God.
All I can say is that we are blessed. We are empowered. We are loved.
And we are redeemed. It gives me
hope to walk into more and more places of hurt and death, knowing He brings the
light of Heaven down each place we go. I
certainly don’t claim to understand why Moseleb didn’t make it, but I see the
Lord’s hand all over the timing. So I
will continue to love and hug Janapai and brush away flies and rewrap arms with
dishrags knowing how the love of Chris transcends all boundaries to invade the
heart of each person we meet.
GLORY….
May you keep FALLING.
