Shall we not accept adversity?

183 women to whom the Lord gave life, and then adversity, spent the day with us on the mission. For most, you would never guess that a fatal and incurable disease defined their participation, as they greeted each other, bustled about in their brightly wrapped kitengis, balanced babies on their hips, laughed. For a few, the gaunt faces and shabby clothes reflected their struggle against the relentless HIV virus and the social ostracism that follows it. They came early in the morning to establish their place in the registration queue, clutching the tattered books that confirm their positive tests. We talk to each one individually, enquiring about their children, their spouses, their access to clinical care, their desire to take a break from child-bearing. We weigh them and their babies, offer testing to confirm whether or not the virus has passed on. They have the option to enter a side room in groups for prayer, an acknowledgement that our practical hand-on help is incomplete, that their social and spiritual pain runs deep, that we come together before the mysteries of God to plead for their survival. Our three interns and assorted other team mates joined them, a Kingdom picture of the young and educated and healthy and privileged sitting side by side with the weak and poor and sick and marginalized, all equally dependent upon the Mercy.

183 women, most with a child or two, or a sister or husband, sipping the hot porridge provided, waiting. Then Scott preached to the crowd from the book of Job. They gasped when he dramatically described Job’s mounting losses, and listened intently when Scott explained Job’s laments. We are studying this as a team right now, and what story is more appropriate for a couple of hundred people with AIDS? Job encourages the sufferer to mourn, to ask questions, to protest, to struggle. But Job also points to an endpoint of faith: holding onto God for who He is, even when life is not neatly explained by action and consequence, even when the innocent must endure great sorrow. This book goes to great lengths to refute the pat religious answer that sickness is a punishment for bad behaviour. And that is good news for 183 women who need to hear it.

Lastly, the food. The draw of the day is the provision of supplemental food: about 50 pounds of beans, a few liters of cooking oil, and a couple of packets of salt, plus a generous cash assistance to transport all of the above home. The purpose of the food is to strengthen the body’s immune system, to prolong the life of the ill, to ease the burden of the disease, to compensate for the lack of energy to wrest calories from the soil of a labor-intensive garden. But the food does more than that, it is a concrete reminder that God has not forgotten these women. Our former team mate Pamela, who organized these distributions for the two years she was here, continues to make them possible by raising the money to buy the food from a caring small group of people in her church in New York City.

Yes, these women accept adversity, with more patience than I would manage, with more of a Job-like grasp that life is not only a series of good gifts. It is a joy to be a small part of the process, though, of mixing a good gift back into their adversity.