It is a real thing, the red eye. I thought back twenty years ago, when I made my first overseas flight, when I met five travelers at breakfast last month. Three of them were Generation Z (in their twenties). It is hard sleeping on a plane. Flying over the Atlantic in the middle of the night. These young folk were with a small team here in central Africa for a short-term mission trip. Seeing my three young friends that morning, some of them savvy travelers and some not, I was reminded of my first overseas flight. This is a twenty-three-hour, multiple time zone trip. Feeling compassion for these fellow travelers made me think of new recruits, showing up on a battlefield, not knowing what they had just stepped into.
They arrived in Uganda, red eyed, but good soldiers, no grumbling and remarkably chipper.
I knew that they were running on empty, with just six hours sleep, but they showed up for breakfast without a single complaint. Introductions, pleasant small talk, and we hit the ground running, time to catch the bus for the Sunday Service.
Thankfully, the weather was pleasant, the ride short, and we were chatting it up along the way.
We were greeted at church with enthusiasm, fist bumps and smiles from the young congregation. Expressions of joy as we were escorted to the front of the chapel, (a hastily built eucalyptus pole-structure, with metal siding, erected in the middle of a field). We are always given VIP seats, reserved for speakers and pastors upfront.
We have asked our host in the past, if we could sit with the audience, (our western democratic leanings prefer to be among the people), but we were told that it would make the congregants uncomfortable, and that they would not know what to think.
Settling into our seats we are introduced, and the place erupts into applause. We are just ordinary folk, nothing special here, nothing to see, but to our host there is something special, something powerful, in our presence.
Our African family, our brothers, and sisters, have felt too often marginalized, and forgotten by westerners, by friends back home.
For us ordinary folk, visitors from afar, just “showing up” is a huge statement. It is a statement saying, “dear friends you are not alone, you are not forgotten!”.
Our very presence is a statement.
Humbled or rather humbling is how it feels, being so warmly welcomed by our African family, being embraced, treated as celebrities, with gestures of gratitude and joy. Humbling. Very Humbling!
As we worshipped together, us ordinary folk and our African family, we knew who the real celebrities were, the real heroes. Our African family, these are the ones left in the shadows of current affairs, marginalized by the west, but these are the true honorees.
What a privilege to be welcomed into their “HOLY PLACE,” their sanctuary, the pole structure in a field, off a dirt road. A structure raised in just thirty days, a sign of the power and presence of God moving within their community. This truly is HOLY GROUND.
Yes, the twenty-three-hours journey, the fatigue, the red eyes are all worth it. To be standing here shoulder-to-shoulder with my African friends, in this simple Holy Place. Humbling! Very Humbling!
Up With Uganda 