The Vav

Scott here.  In the middle of my ultrasound clinic yesterday Jennifer stopped in to say goodbye as she headed for Kampala  with Heidi to visit the UNICEF office, trying to persuade them to continue to supply us with the therapeutic food we need for our malnutrition patients.  Of course, I expected life to notch up to "hectic" level.  We survive because we are a unit, juggling the myriad responsibilities of patient care, team coordination, and the seemingly endless list of general life maintenance tasks required to live in Africa (...last time I tried to flush the toilet there was no water which led to a two hour comedy of errors including eradication of a colony of biting ants just so I could touch the outside water valve connecting us to Michael's gravity water line).   

An hour and a half after she left, just as I finished my last ultrasound case, Jennifer called.  "The car just stopped and steam poured out from under the hood," she said.  She drove the Bartkoviches old car (~11 years old) so we could  equip it with new tires and put the machine into the hands of our young teachers.  We discussed lots of possible scenarios, including various explanations and solutions to the overheating and various car swaps.  She accepted the challenge of refilling the radiator while I got on the road to come and assist.   A half hour into my journey towards her, I found the road blocked by two trucks (one broken down and one which got stuck in the mud trying to pass) so I turned back to use an alternate path.  In the meantime, Jennifer called to say she got the car started again and we agreed that she could proceed.  I headed home, but halfway home, she called to say "We're halfway up the mountain and the thing died again."  So I turned around and headed back towards her.  Thirty-five kilometers of bone-jarring, bolt-loosening, washboard, cobblestone road to hurry over and ponder...why.

We're currently in a 10 week study of Michael Card's A Sacred Sorrow, a book subtitled Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament.  His thesis:  Lament (weeping, protesting, complaining) to God is the path to worship of God. Eugene Peterson in the Foreward says, "...learning the language of lament is not only necessary to restore Christian dignity to suffering and repentence and death, it is necessary to provide a Christian witness to a world that has no language for and is therefore oblivious to the glories of wilderness and cross."  

After nearly 15 years in Bundibugyo, we continue to seek to understand the mystery of pain and suffering.  Immersed in the ocean of it nearly from dawn to dusk.  Yesterday alone:

I told the wife of our house-worker that their 15 week baby-in-utero was dead....

I found a three year old child who's shoulder (proximal humerus bone) was gone, eaten by infection...

I received three requests for financial assistance, for the mere basics of roofing sheets, chairs in the home, and secondary school fees....

We've studied and prayed, trying to comprehend the purpose of pain, to see it through the lens of the Scriptures, to develop a "theology of suffering".  The general response here is to explain through blame.  Usually a curse, a relationship out of kilter, ancestral spirits creating havoc.  

A Sacred Sorrow is not an apologetic for the existence of evil in the world, but rather a biblical examination of the real world response of several of the giants of the historical Judeo-Christian faith (Job David, Jeremiah,Jesus).  It seeks not to answer or justify, but merely to lend a hand to those who grieve.   

David's struggles in the wilderness led to a whole host of Psalms of Lament (Psalms 5, 13, 22, 28, 31, 38, 51, 55, 59, 69,109).  They all begin with his complaints, his struggles, his desperation.  But there is in each one a sudden transition, a switch in focus from Self to Elsewhere.  The sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the vav (also spelled waw) marks the "crossing of the line" from whining to worship.  It always seems sudden and to me inexplicable.  This is what I want to understand....how does that happen?

Yesterday while I jostled and bumped towards a dead car, I wondered...  "What is the point of this?  This is a colossal waste of my time."  My head and throat ached from an annoying viral URI which had developed in the morning.  I was diverted from my work and kids to hours of struggle and frustration.  Compared to Job, of course, I could not complain, nevertheless I did.  

I did finally reach Jennifer in the mid-afternoon on the mountainside, gave her our reliable LandRover so she could proceed to Kampala.  I creeped back toward the mission in the crippled Nissan.  I broke down another half dozen times and arrived home at dusk, dirty, thirsty, yet thankful.  Thankful because it could have been worse?  I suppose partly.  Somewhere along the road, though, in the midst of my grumblings, I realized that I did have a need, a hunger.   I remembered David's imprecations which melted with "disturbing clarity" into worship.  My annoyance also morphed somewhere into something else.  In some way, I realized that I had no where else to go.  The path of pain seems to lead either to despair or worship.  I choose worship.

(N.B.  "A Sacred Sorrow" has an accompanying "Experience Guide", a booklet which leads through 10 weeks of readings in Job, the Psalms, Jeremiah, and the gospels. Both get five star ratings from Bundibugyo).