America to Africa and the Trouble Within Us

Autumn.  The season that speeds by without regret, forcing leaves to the ground and coaxing the wind to blow every-which-way over faces and noses, stirring up cotton clouds and purple-blue skies.  A scene of willing surrender wherever we look. Not even a complaint from the migrating birds overhead, only their “jabber-jaw” to one another at the best rout OUT.  Out of the cold they know awaits them if they stay.  

I deep breathe the crisp air in the morning on the way to the chicken coop. In the quiet of daybreak the hens jump from their roost and out of their sleepy beds.  They fight like children on the playground for the mealworm scratch I throw down, and I sneakily collect the little prizes they’ve left for our breakfast while they’re occupied. 

We dip our leaves in wax to hold on a little longer.  A bowl full of frozen-in-time fall-ish glory sits on my dinged-up farm table.  Maybe I’ll string them up one of these days across the window frame.  Maybe. 

A few weeks ago, we exited the plane and a 17-hour flight from Ethiopia all the way to Chicago Illinois.  My mind freshly filled with new and beautiful faces, my heart aching to see the ones already etched onto my soul and side. 

I’m not sure I’d say flying halfway around the world changed me as many claimed it might.  I learned something important on that trip though - something I hadn’t thought I would grapple with.  Days after our return with bags unpacked and the right meds to kill the E. coli infection I had contracted, I found myself frustrated with a simple thing of daily life.  Nothing I can even recall now, only that it didn’t actually matter, and I was annoyed.  I caught my own heart’s quickening beat over the offense, and I shook my head at it.  
Had I already forgotten the faces of the mothers on the street wailing over their unfed children?  Did it slip my mind so soon, the orphanage of fatherless daughters sitting on the steps of a stone institution?  Could I really be so forgetful to replace the images of men dragging their crippled bodies through the dusty streets to beg for spare change?  

The answer was yes.  
Yes, it’s possible to see one person's pain and all too soon jump back into the American life of common annoyances and temporary setbacks.  

The heart is dipped in sin like our leaves are in the wax - holding it forever in a place of revolving behaviors and pointless patterns.  

Until Jesus. 

On a damp morning with raindrops still tapping away at the porch steps I read in The Word that I carry inside me the very spirit of a HOLY God who melts WHOLE mountains like beeswax to a flame with the mere breath of His own hallowed goodness.  

I see in scripture that this God who has brought me out of fire upon fire without SINGE or CINDER runs after me still, even when I’ve willingly dipped and re-dipped my heart into the curing (stiffening) potion of apathy. 
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I hum the old hymn aloud as it unapologetically questions my soul, “what can wash away my sin…what can make me whole again?”  Both questions answered in perfect tune in my mind - “nothing but the blood of Jesus”.  
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​So, what’s with all this heart trouble we’re unable to kick on our own?  Is it really true that no experience or expertise, no mission abroad or college degree will truly impact a heart to change completely?  

No, nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

Is it possible that we carry alongside our faith a fault that screams “flesh!” And the two are just always at war?  And nothing but Jesus can conquer our sin-soaked hearts?  

True. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

I saw in a country far from my little NY home, a people similar to us in heart and hurts, with the same sinful and pressing problems.  It occurred to me while in Ethiopia that it’s what we carry within us that’s shaking things up so much in this world.  

It’s not as much a warming globe or a drug too readily available, but the heart hidden behind rib and lung that keeps rhythm with whatever it’s chosen to steep in.  A heart that will willingly dance to the beat of a tune that eventually will kill the very soul it’s partnered with. 

Oh, but can’t you just feel it?  The heaping hole in your heart apart from Jesus?  The crevice that splits so deep you know something big MUST be what’s missing?  

He’s here.  He’s the God of today and right now.  God with us.  God WITHIN us.  Even when the lights are snuffed out and all you see is the darkness around you - He is there.  We won’t have all the answers, but we can have all of God! 

There’s no workday, community service, disaster relief effort that will melt the set-up heart like the love of Jesus.  It’s not to be worked for or scheduled in.  Nothing but surrender and be set free - as willingly as the trees their beloved leaves.  

“Nothing can my sin erase 
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
Naught of works, tis all of grace 
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

Oh! Precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other thing I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”