(Because I don't have a picture of this event I took one off the internet, and will have to let my words construct a picture for you)
“I love my life” is what was reverberating over and over in my head as I traveled through the rainforest, down rainy season ravaged roads on a motorcycle today. The trees towered above with their inhabitants singing various sweet songs, and sometimes we came upon cleared patches for small farms or rocky areas that gave a view of the forest beyond. The sweetness of the fresh air, dense and life giving, was such a contrast to Yaoundé city air.
The other reason that so much joy was ringing in my heart was due to the memory of the beauty I had witnessed in the lives of a group of women in Deuk, a small village known for it’s sorcery and night life. I arrived Sunday evening, with the dark quickly approaching. My body, spirit, and mind were exhausted, and I didn’t see a way God could take what I felt was a shell of a being and fill it to overflowing in one night. However, somewhere between the brilliance of the stars in a sky unpolluted by city lights, and the early morning light trying weave it’s way into the mud brick home where I slept with my friend and her daughter, God prepared me for the day.
After walking to the homes of various women to invite them to our get-together in the afternoon, we headed home to begin preparing the meal. What an ordeal it was! We had carried much of the food in, including frozen meat in a cooler and chicken broth to flavor the curry sauce. I wanted to prepare my favorite, what mother prepares me to show me she loves me! So, with many women and children’s eyes on me, I sat by the fire, smoke curling up, stinging my eyes, and made the curry sauce. There was a running commentary in the other side of the cloudy kitchen of what I was doing, and it made me laugh. Milk? Coconut? Flour? Green spices? Liquid from a bottle (The chicken broth)? She’s washing her hands again?
After 5 hours of cooking and preparing, I knew that whatever happened in that meeting had to be God. I went to the well to carry water, and endured the familiar laughter that comes along with a white woman doing ANY work in the village, especially carrying water on her head…of course it doesn’t happen that I create my own little water fall that often leaves my dress dripping. You’d think that water would have the decency to stay in the bucket and stop moving around so much…but water must do as water does, as I knew what I had to do. I had to overflow…the joy that I have in Christ, that is indeed my strength, had to overflow to those women, weather I was feeling the presence of that joy or not.
Women came expectedly late, and began discussing in the local language various issues. They broke into French for a time, and I realized that this was for my benefit. They were talking about opposition from the dominant church in the area against me, in particular. I was thankful that through their statements they understood that I was only longing that they walk more closely with God, and that I am not asking them to follow me, even if that is what the church fears will happen.
I was thankful when the rest of the women arrived, and the subject was changed. Eventually, I got up to address the ladies. By this point I had realized that my purpose there was to speak what I know to be true about God’s love for them into their lives, and then to demonstrate that love. I asked them to look at their neighbor and say, “You’re beautiful” …when their attention focused back on me, they were a different group of women. Smiles decorated their often somber faces, and I saw they were shining from the inside out. Words of affirmation are not cultural, and many of them don’t feel accepted by the church either. I read from Romans 8, “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and then we sang a song together about Jesus being our liberator and being free from condemnation. I was overwhelmed as their voices filled the room by the power of that statement, “ilnya plus de condemnation” “There is no more condemnation. When we were finished I explained I was going to do something that seemed strange, but that Christ did for his disciples. I shared how our feet are often parts of our bodies we are not proud of, and that we have part of ourselves that we are not proud of. Therefore, to demonstrate, God’s cleansing of those places we don’t want anyone else to see, I told them I was going to wash their feet and pray for them in the process.
As I knelt before these women, I didn’t feel so tired anymore. I sensed, in the touching of their feet, that these feet have been to places I cannot and will not ever go. As they were callused and scared, I acknowledged that I, like them, am callused and scared in some ways by the curves and pains of this life. For the next hour or so, I prayed over them by name, that God would call them to himself, that they would be free, that they would know his love, and whatever else they asked me to pray for. I felt renewed in the act of washing their feet…it was so simple, but I knew I was walking in the way of Christ, and there was redeeming power in that. I asked them how they felt afterward, expecting answers like, “strange or embarrassed” but what I got was, “We felt loved, like you really cared for us.” Praise God! Only he can really make someone feel loved, and only he could have gotten me on my knees to wash 25 women’s feet in a mud brick room in the village of Deuk in Cameroon, West Africa.
After the giving of memory verses and a closing prayer, I made sure that everyone gave me a hug as they left. They were truly a different group of women. They were lighter, freer. I believe this day spoke to me so powerfully of the simplicity of the gospel of Christ and yet the intense power the flows through the knowledge of his love for us. Sometimes we don’t need to give a sermon with our words, but with our lives…and sometimes we give the best ones when we are feeling broken and tired.
May God do more with us today than we can possibly do….that is when he is most glorified.
Ah, yes, I love my life…God I love you.