On Setbacks in the Victorious Kingdom

Two sandal-clad feet swing out of the opened car door. They slide to the red, dusty ground, flattening under a new weight as the long frame of a young man steps out of the car. The sun beats down on the dry landscape, creating a wall of heat, sharply contrasted by the air-conditioned interior of the car. Ahead are mudbrick walls, corn-stalk shades, and the sounds of village life.  Those feet carry the young man village-ward.  The kids notice him first; their eyes are always more attuned to miracles.  Soon, however, adults begin to emerge from their courtyards asking one another if it is really—could it be—the same Amadou that left here paralyzed? The effect snowballs and soon the village is reeling under the effects of astonishment. It’s a scene I’ve rehearsed many times in my mind.

Photo Credit: the very talented Ryan Kolacinski from Crosspoint Church, WI

That was the dream, but we’ve suffered a setback.

When I first met Amadou, he scooted out from the inside of his mud hut on a small stool.  His teenage body, instead of filling out with strength, was wasting away.  It was as if somehow all the muscle on his trunk, upper arms, and upper legs had been removed, leaving only bone and skin. Even simple movements required enormous effort and strange contortions. 

He came to the hospital for a battery of tests, and an initial diagnosis was suggested. We began treatment, and the first glimmers of hope shown through as he began to make infinitesimal gains. Emboldened by this progress, we brought him to live at the hospital so that we could begin physical therapy. And, slowly he gained weight and strength. He was far from walking himself back into the village, but at least it was movement in that direction.

There is another current to this story.  Amadou had become a Jesus follower while living at the hospital and had even started learning to read.  He eventually “graduated” from reading class and earned his Bible.  These days, he can be found wheeling himself to quiet corners of pediatrics in order to be alone and read the Word. He is the very first Jesus follower from his village—a place reputed for hardened hearts that have rejected every attempt at proclaiming the Kingdom.

So, you can understand my dream. Here this young man, who was so visibly sick, becomes a disciple of Jesus, the very first from his village.  If he goes walking back into that village, the walls of resistance will fall down and the Kingdom will take a massive step forward.

But like I said, we’ve suffered a setback. 

After months of plateaued performance, and frankly, regressions we didn’t want to admit, we finally received the results of a biopsy we had done.  The results? Muscular dystrophy. The medical hopes of seeing him walk again are crushed.  We can do no more than hopefully slow the regression as he weakens slowly toward death.

What do we make of these death-blows to hope?  The emotional loss is difficult enough as you look forward to a bad outcome for someone you’ve grown to love and care about. Yet, the problems grow in degrees when you’ve tied your hopes to faith. Questions about God’s goodness and willingness to intervene make the loss even more thorny. What you had envisioned as a way forward for the Kingdom has suddenly become barred off, and you are left to wonder why you believed and hoped and mustered your faith in the first place. 

Lately, in a Bible study with friends, we’ve been reading through the book of Daniel. It has left me pondering the Kingdom of God and all its significance for our lives. The first chapter leaves the reader reeling with the despair that Daniel must have felt.  He looks on as a foreign king invades Jerusalem, enters the temple (the very place where God was present and active in Israel), and hauls off all the treasure he can find.  To make matters worse, this pagan king installs all this booty in the temple of his own god.  The message is clear: his god has won.

Without so much as a pause for breath, a moment to recover some hope, Daniel finds himself carted off to a foreign city to serve as a slave for this pagan king.  The text gives strong indication that as the king’s slave, Daniel was castrated. To top things off, Daniel’s name is changed to a name that honors the pagan god of this oppressing king.

Yet, like a warrior who’s been thoroughly beaten, lying bloodied on the ground, yet inexplicably pulls himself back up, we see Daniel reach deep for courage. He risks his own life to decline the rich food coming from the king’s table out of preference for vegetables and water—an act of resistance that seems so futile and pointless, one wonders why Daniel would bother.

This is the pattern of Daniel’s story.  Immersed in the crushing presence of a pagan empire, Daniel is playing by the rules of another Kingdom altogether.  In small acts of subversion, he stands out as an example of courage and faith that even the kings are forced to recognize. God blesses Daniel and uses him to further advance His plans. All along the story, we catch a vision of the coming Kingdom, which smashes all the mighty kingdoms of the world.  It endures eternally and fills the whole earth like a mighty mountain.

It is precisely this victorious vision of the Kingdom of God that feels so discordant when faced with setbacks. How does a Kingdom that rises to fill the whole earth abide defeat? What of us, citizens of this Kingdom, who live there by faith? How do we continue on in the face of such seemingly solid proof that we’ve hoped in a farce? Why will God simply not change the circumstances, perform the miracle, show up in undeniable power, when to us, it seems so strategic?

I’m writing this precisely because I have no idea. I don’t write as unbelieving cynic; I wouldn’t have even taken the time. No, I write as a puzzled, desperate believer who wants nothing more than to see the Kingdom expand and to whom these setbacks don’t seem to make any sense given what I know of the radical power and love available to us in this Kingdom.

Family squabbles being what they are, there are always plenty of signs pointing the way forward. There is an old familiar love that reassures despite present miscomprehensions. Here I see three worth noting:  

1. Setbacks in the victorious Kingdom call me back to simplicity.  While I get distracted and get busy planning all the messy details of an empire, Jesus laid out a very simple mandate for me within His Kingdom: love. Am I loving God with all that I have? Is that translating naturally into a self-giving love for others? Can we admit that in planning empire advancement in the face of challenging circumstances, we often get distracted from loving the people who are most affected by those circumstances?

2. Setbacks confirm that the Kingdom is for everyone, not just the able bodied, the strong, the successful, the majority. Daniel saw the Kingdom coming and smashing all other empires at precisely the moment of Roman dominance. Rome lived with the delusion that they’d brought about peace on earth. While things were great if you were a strong, intelligent, able-bodied, rich Roman, this was only maintained by oppressing, often times violently, anyone who didn’t fit those categories. Jesus’ Kingdom isn’t predicated on this “inclusion of the fittest only” principle. The very initiator of the Kingdom died a shameful, weak, and painful death. He won by losing. There is hope for everyone within the Kingdom to belong, to be loved, and to be restored because this has never been the strong-man’s game.

3.  Setbacks thicken the plot. Jesus lay in the grave, and all reason for belief seemed lost. Yet, His was a surprise ending. The Kingdom is eternal. It weathers every storm, absorbs every blow, and keeps on growing. The end of the story is never fully written, and there is always room for redemption. The whole narrative of the Kingdom, and every story of those living for the Kingdom, calls us to persevere in faith.

So faith, hope, and love remain…

PRAYER REQUESTS

1. Pray for Amadou.  Pray that God would miraculously heal him.  Also, pray that he would continue to grow in his faith.

2. Pray for Pierre, another patient (good friends with Amadou) who has a chronic bone infection. Despite several surgeries, we can’t seem to fully treat the issue.  Pray for him as he deals with a lot of pain. Pray also for his young faith.

3. Pray for our team as we meet to discuss how to better organize ourselves in order to tackle our strategic goals while also maintaining a real thread of team unity.

4. Continue to pray for young friends of mine who are working through all the implications of what it means to follow Jesus: Bakary, Yacou, and Amadou.

5. The season of outreach is upon us.  Please be praying for the Holy Spirit to go ahead of us into villages and lives with whom we’ll have contact.

6. Pray for the pastor in the village of Kougnou.  Land was just purchased for a church. Starting a new work like this is not easy, and he’s met with some resistance. Pray that he and his wife would be a shining light.