Love Through Fire: Nigeria

Red dirt, and smiles bright against dark skin, people in t-shirts and flip-flops from ten-years past, driving cars twenty-years past, the red-dirt streets flooded with people, people with no job, nothing to do, just looking here and there and idly standing, not even a cigarette or book to pass time—and then going to the poor areas where enormous vats of water and yeast brew together, fermenting, all for alcohol, the substance—when ready—poured into gourd shells, and then into mouths and then in veins and taking over the mind, thousands and hundreds of thousands of flies swarming around the vats and on the men's faces—all of it so alarming your heart has retreated into itself and you can't feel anything at all.

I was 18 years old when I went to Nigeria, just becoming a young man, like a peach when it is moments from being ripe. Days after graduation, I boarded a plane to this African country, this Nigeria, with only Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to guide me. Nigeria, a foreign world, a world you could look at and see only sadness, because people are hungry, and don't have jobs. But then you look again and there are more smiles than here in America, more laughs—especially among the followers of Christ in Nigeria. In the fifth verso of John Newton's "Amazing Grace", I find what these people have—

"And when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace."

I have nothing that they lack. In truth, they have something I am without—a joy and peace that is founded on confidence and hope. They wear this joy and peace on their smile. In their laugh.

I saw awful things, to be sure, like the things I first described, all of which are true and real and happening right now. I saw pain and sickness that had only before existed in pictures; I saw children's stomachs bloated with hunger and blind women with stubs for fingers and toes, people living in shacks smaller than our closets eating what we wouldn't feed our dogs. All of it, the pain, searing my heart. Turned me against America, against myself even—why aren't Americans, at least people in North Dallas, doing anything about this pain? Why am I not doing anything? It isn't fair and I am participating in this injustice. The truth is, there are people helping, many people. As much as you might not like him, George W. Bush gave millions of dollars to help fight AIDS in Africa, and I saw the fruit of that grace with my own two eyes. One example of many.

Nigeria spurred my heart to action, to a stronger love that lives practically and sees real opportunities to love people in real ways. Nigeria wiped away the notion that money buys Joy. Money may buy happiness, but it does not buy Joy. The Christians in Nigeria showed me what real Joy looks like, how real Peace acts, and the amazing things that Grace through Jesus Christ can accomplish.

With love,
h