Congo Dawn Read online

  “Unless God isn’t watching. The human experiment hasn’t gone so well, and he’s just walked away and left us to finish killing ourselves off from our own greed and stupidity and meanness. That I can understand. Bottom line, if God doesn’t waste his compassion on a broken world, why should we? Me, I keep it simple. I love my niece. I love my sister. I’d give my life for them. Maybe . . . maybe someday, however unlikely that seems now, I’ll even love a man and children of my own.”

  Robin had not heard the front door opening over the music outside, so only the lift of Miriam’s eyes, her acknowledging nod, turned Robin’s head. Michael’s lean, muscled frame rested against the doorpost.

  Michael’s quizzical gaze met Robin’s. How much had he heard?

  Robin turned her head so she could no longer see Michael as she finished defiantly, “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned these last few years, it’s that you can’t save the whole world. You can’t love the whole world. Especially people you can do nothing to help anyway. Who only too likely would just hurt you if they had opportunity. All you can do is protect your own heart, your own life, your own survival. And sometimes, when you can, your own family.”

  In Robin’s peripheral vision, boots crossed the concrete floor. A chair scraped back from the desk. As the solar-powered computer screen blinked to life, lean hands settled a Skype headset into place.

  Robin added hastily, “Of course I didn’t mean by any of that to criticize the admirable mission you and your husband are carrying out here at Taraja. I . . . I must sound horribly self-centered and negative.”

  Robin had prided herself on keeping her voice light and detached. This was a philosophical discussion, not the hemorrhaging of a long-contained heart wound. But something of those pent-up emotions had betrayed her in face or eyes, because unbelievably, the tears Robin refused to let spill now shimmered instead in Miriam’s own gentle eyes.

  “Oh, Robin, I wish I could show you just how wrong you are. Believe me, love is never wasted, no matter how much it hurts. As to loving people who are just going to hurt you, isn’t that exactly what our Savior, Jesus Christ, did? ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’ It’s no fairy tale. It’s an unshakable truth of this universe.”

  Miriam stretched a hand across the table. “As for you, have you been listening to yourself? If you were self-centered, you wouldn’t care so much about the suffering of others. Be so angry at God on their behalf. And say what you like about protecting yourself—what you’ve done here today hardly seems like someone who doesn’t believe in wasting love or compassion. All those medical supplies, tents, food. Those kids you found down in your own camp. You could have just walked away, shooed them off like the trespassers they were. I’ll bet that didn’t even occur to you, did it?”

  “No, of course not,” Robin began.

  But Miriam cut her off with a dismissive wave. “There is no ‘of course not’! Believe me, we’ve seen countless people walk away over the years. You didn’t because you cared about those kids. Because that same compassion you speak of burned in your heart so that you couldn’t turn your back on them. But can’t you see that very compassion burning in you for hurting people is in itself evidence of how much God loves this world? Because like you said, do you really think you are more compassionate than the Creator of all these people? Who do you think puts that compassion for others in your heart?

  “You asked why God doesn’t just reach down into this world to put an end to suffering. But that’s exactly what he did when he stepped into human time and space in the person of Jesus Christ. And that’s what he’s doing every time he sends someone like you here today to be the human hands and feet of his love to a hurting world. Wouldn’t you agree, Michael?”

  Miriam’s query allowed Robin to overhear Michael’s response on the Skype link. “You’re sure about that? . . . No, I wish I could say it was a surprise. . . . Yes, I’ll send you the info. . . . That’s right. . . . Keep me posted. Over and out.”

  Michael’s strong fingers now flew over the keyboard. But from his ironic glance across the room, he’d been following the two women’s conversation. “I think Robin here would be the first to point out that those generous contributions you mentioned came from Trevor Mulroney, not her own pocket. And believe me, Sister dear, a man like Mulroney does nothing for completely altruistic reasons.”

  Was Michael still thinking this was only about mounting a spy campaign in the refugee camp? Robin jumped to her feet. “Michael’s right. I can’t take credit for anything here today. That stuff all came from mission supplies, not from me. And now I’ve intruded on you long enough. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

  “Oh no, please don’t go yet!” Miriam rose hastily to her own feet. “I haven’t even served your tea. Or the scones I made. I am a terrible hostess! And Michael—he didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Even if all that stuff came from your employers, do you think we don’t know who went out on a limb to get it here for us? Michael, do you have something to add?”

  The fierce look Miriam directed across the room was so un­characteristic of Michael’s gentle younger sister—rather like a kitten glaring at a misbehaving Saint Bernard—that Robin had to swallow a smile. Michael didn’t bother. His firm mouth quirking upward, he pulled off the Skype headset to stride over to the table.

  “I didn’t mean to downplay your role in this, Robin. Like my sister, I am not unaware that Trevor Mulroney would never have coughed up so generously without you pushing the matter. And I hope you’ll reconsider rushing off. Miriam makes a mean pot of tea and scones. She’d be terribly disappointed if you didn’t stay to try them.”

  Robin was already subsiding back into her chair. However un­comfortable Michael seemed to go out of his way to make her feel, she would not bring further distress to this sweet, kindly woman who was her hostess.

  The teakettle was now singing its own quiet song. Miriam poured hot water into a teapot, then lifted a cloth to reveal a plate of freshly baked scones. She carried the plate along with a sugar bowl and jar of orange marmalade to the table and poured three cups of tea.

  “I’m afraid there’s no milk,” she apologized, pushing sugar bowl, scones, and marmalade over to Robin. “We’d given out what little we had in stock before you brought up the new supplies.”

  “This is perfect.” Robin spooned sugar into her tea, then accepted a scone, shaking her head at the marmalade. “But how in the world did you bake scones without an oven?”

  “It’s a campfire recipe my mother taught me. I bake them in a cast-iron skillet.” Sliding back into her seat, Miriam smiled at Robin. “Please, eat up! And I hope you won’t mind if I give an answer to what you asked earlier.”

  Miriam stirred sugar into her own tea as she continued. “It’s just what you brought up is something I’ve done a lot of thinking about. You ask how a God of love can tolerate so much human suffering. To me, it’s the other way around. The real question is how a God of justice can possibly tolerate human choices.

  “You see, everything you’ve mentioned—all the war, starvation, suffering, broken and hurting families—they’ve all come about through human actions. Human choices. Not God’s. Oh yes, there’s natural disasters too. But for the most part it’s human beings choosing to do selfish, unkind, cruel things to each other. Other human beings choosing not to take a stand to stop it. Preferring to look after their own comfort and their own interests and their own families and their own village and their own tribe and their own country and so on instead of working together.”

  Miriam set her spoon down on her saucer. “And that to me is one good reason why a God of love can’t just wave a wand and void all human suffering. Not here in the Congo or anywhere else. Because if we never experience the ultimate consequences of our own actions, how are we ever to learn how ugly and evil those actions are? It’s like some well-meaning parent who rushes to bail out their adolescent delinquent every time the kid indulges in petty theft, shoplifting,
drunk driving, whatever, paying off the fines and restitution so their kid doesn’t end up in jail. Then they wonder why the kid ends up instead a full-fledged criminal with no moral conscience as an adult.

  “Call human suffering God’s equivalent of tough love. Like those doting parents, maybe you and I would keep waving that wand and canceling out the ugly consequences of human choices. But God, who happens to see and know a whole lot more than we ever can, has in his infinite wisdom chosen to let the human race experience the ultimate consequences of our greed, violence, hate, war. Unfortunately, as you’ve pointed out, any number of those we would call innocent get swept up in those consequences.”

  Miriam’s dark, silky eyebrows knit together above a slim-bridged nose as she laid out one measured phrase after another. “So the question is: Why doesn’t God at least protect those who don’t deserve to be hurt? Why should innocent people have to suffer for the sins of others? If the purpose for human suffering is to punish wrongdoing, well, that’s certainly justified from the viewpoint of a holy God. But it’s not so easy to see God’s love in it.

  “Unless God sees some greater purpose for the suffering he permits in our lives. A value to us that we just can’t grasp while we’re in the middle of it. You see, once you accept that God really, truly loves us, that he is love, that he wants nothing more than the absolute best for our lives, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Miriam looked anxiously at Robin. “Oh, dear, this must be way more than you wanted to hear.”

  “No, no, please, go on.” Rather to Robin’s own surprise, her quick reassurance was not simply politeness. The thought processes of this young woman were beginning to fascinate her. “I mean, I’m the one who asked.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” When Miriam reached to pick up a volume sitting on a shelf, Robin was not surprised to see that it was a well-thumbed Bible. “I’ll try not to get too preachy. But the Bible has a lot to say about God permitting suffering in our lives. The book of Job in the Old Testament is one such story that doesn’t quite make sense to our human thinking. Satan makes an accusation that Job is only following God because God has given Job the perfect life. A wife and ten kids. Wealth. Respect of friends and neighbors. So God tells Satan he can strip everything from Job but his life. Which Satan does.

  “I won’t unload the whole thing on you, since I’m guessing you know the basic story. Job never renounces faith in God. But he sure throws a lot of questions at God. Yells and screams them, in fact. And though God eventually restores all Job had lost, he never does explain his reasons. Instead it’s Job who ends up recognizing that God has every right to do whatever he chooses with Job’s life. But there’s one thing Job had to say even while yelling and screaming at God that has become engraved on my own mind. Especially since he wasn’t saying it about Satan, but about God, whom Job very correctly pinpointed as the one ultimately responsible for his suffering. Chapter 23, verse 10 of the book that bears his name. ‘When he—’ that is, God—‘has tested me, I will come forth as gold.’”

  As she spoke, Miriam was flipping through pages marked with highlighted passages and scribbled notes. “The image is of a smith melting down gold in a blazing furnace to produce an unadulterated metal refined of all impurities. The same image is used over and over in Scripture in reference to God’s purpose behind human suffering and tribulation. Not to be cruel. Or to punish. But to refine our character. To make us strong and mature in our faith. In fact, we’re told we should actually rejoice in our tribulations because of their value to our lives. The entire first letter of the apostle Peter in the New Testament is one long treatise on that subject. But the verse I’ve come to cling to in the dark hours of my own night is in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter 5, verses 3 and 4: ‘We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.’”

  Miriam’s nose wrinkled as she looked up from the worn pages. “I’ll admit I never paid much attention to all those bits of Scripture growing up. Maybe because my own life was so happy, so ideal in many ways. Surrounded by the beauty of Africa. A family that loved me. My Congolese brothers and sisters in Christ who also showed me nothing but love. I guess I was pretty innocent or maybe just plain selfish because I never really saw that even then the world was so much less sunny for so many around me.”

  Robin understood exactly where the other woman was coming from. Had she herself as a child in Kenya ever seen beyond the beauty of Africa to its suffering? Miriam’s amber gaze grew shadowed.

  “All of which meant that when the reality of a very dark, cruel world did come crashing in . . . well, like you, I couldn’t understand how the heavenly Father whose love had always been the rock on which I counted could let such things happen to me. Much less expect me to actually rejoice in those trials. It took me a while, years in fact, to finally glimpse at least a little just what that Scripture means, about the fires of suffering and pain refining like gold. Producing character and perseverance. Yes, and hope. A hope that isn’t only about everything going right.”

  Miriam focused her gaze on Robin as though withdrawing her thoughts from distant memory. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, you seem a really nice, caring person, Robin Duncan. You see all those people out there, the Congolese people as a whole, as victims who need rescuing and your pity. And you want to help them. To give them a better, easier life. Which is certainly laudable.

  “But—please don’t take this as criticism—but I’ve been in your country. My parents’ country. People there have for the most part exactly the kind of life you’re suggesting God owes every human being. A roof overhead. Electricity and running water. Plenty of food and clothes. Education. A car, maybe even two. Freedom from constant fear and war. And yet can you honestly say having so much has made all the people in your country smarter, better, harder-working, more caring human beings than the rest of the planet?”

  Robin had no answer. How well she remembered that initial bewilderment coming from Nairobi to a South Carolina middle school. Her new peers focused on the latest MTV pop star, video game, designer label as though they had no consciousness of a vast, dark world where things like bombs blew up other children’s mothers. Nor could Robin, the pampered daughter of privileged expatriates, claim any superiority, for all her pride in a wider worldview and the pain of recent tragedy.

  She smiled wryly. “Hey, I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t prosperity, education, or any of those benefits that taught me what little I can claim to know of character, discipline, honor. It was the meanest, nastiest drill sergeant a Marine boot camp ever possessed. And Afghanistan.”

  Robin’s glance slid to Michael, quietly consuming his refreshment. His gaze met hers in a brief moment of shared memories before he sloped a half smile toward his sister.

  “I’m with Robin. Coming stateside from a Congo rainforest, I figured I was tougher than my college peers. But it wasn’t until the furnace blast of combat drops in Afghanistan that I really learned endurance and discipline. I guess it’s human nature to want the next generation to have advantages we didn’t have. I know what kind of dreams Mom and Dad had for the two of us. Problem is, prosperity can also spawn arrogance, entitlement, laziness. So when we get our way in making life easier for the next generation, we also discover they don’t have the strength, resourcefulness, ingenuity that were the products of hardship in our own lives. In trying to make life easier for others, we can end up simply crippling them as human beings.”

  “That’s just what I was trying to say!” Miriam responded eagerly. “Not that I’m suggesting deliberately making life hard for people. But—well, take the Congo, for instance. For all its problems, Michael can testify with me that we’ve seen this country, this life produce some of the most resilient, hardworking, sharing, compassionate people this planet holds. They have strength and endurance precisely because they’ve survived so much. They’re unbelievably resourceful. Foreigners who would
dismiss them as lazy have never seen a bicycle peddler pushing flour and salt hundreds of kilometers for no more than a few francs’ profit to feed his family. The Congolese have a spirit of generosity that doesn’t just care for their own but will take in every relative and neighbor left homeless by war when they don’t even have food to feed themselves. And somehow, despite war, hunger, loss, they can keep on singing!”

  Miriam’s gesture was toward the nearest window, its open shutters offering a clear view of the drummers squatted below that dangling lantern, their sticks tapping across hollowed wood so quickly it was impossible to make out individual movements. The audience was clapping to the beat, and a few energetic souls had jumped up to pound out a rhythmic counterpoint with their feet.

  “Though, believe me, much as I love this country, I’m not blind to the negatives. The Congo is such a rich, huge place that should work, should prosper, if its people would just lay aside their differences, forgive, work together. If its leaders would just pour resources into building this country instead of filling their own pockets. Even that spirit of generosity can work against them because it leads to nepotism, handing out resources or positions to family members and friends instead of the best qualified and most deserving. And I’m certainly not blind to those, far too many, who’ve chosen to kill, rob, oppress their own countrymen.”

  Miriam slanted Robin a rueful smile. “To sum up—and I do apologize for taking so long to get here—the biggest purpose I’ve come to glimpse behind why God permits so much darkness and suffering and injustice in this world is just what that life verse of mine says. Darkness, suffering, injustice are the very things that show the measure of a person’s true character as peace and comfort never can. After all, without the darkness, how could we ever measure the light? Without the trials, without the option to choose unspeakable evil, we wouldn’t truly be free to choose things like courage, honor, sacrifice, endurance.