Emerging Africa

‘“If you had one wish, what would it be?” Surrounded by the devastation of civil war and poverty, the woman looked down at the ground and then back up. She stared at me from my television screen and said, “I want my children to live in a different world. I long for a world I have never known.” I have never forgotten her words or the way she said them. She was dreaming of a new community.’

In the continent of Africa, 400,000 children today will lie down to sleep without a mother or a father to kiss them goodnight, innocently orphaned by the greatest plague to spread across the earth. The HIV/AIDS epidemic that is decimating the continent of Africa is literally causing millions of children to be homeless, to be orphaned day after day and night after night. War is raging across the nations and thousand and thousands of lives are being lost.

I’ve been reading a book by Elizabeth Psiani called the Wisdom of Whores. She is an epidemiologist who has studied and worked as a scientist in the AIDS Industry, publishing the first reports on HIV and AIDS for the UN and other international organisations. In her book she highlights the harsh, cruel industry that AIDs has become and describes it as a “world where money eclipses truth.” However though it is a world of dirt, of scandal, of humiliation and of shame, it is also a world that is seeking the love of Christ that is seeking the passionate grace of God. In 2006 the American society of plastic surgeons published a report that states, in 1995 ‘“the world spent less that US$250 million trying to extinguish the HIV epidemic.” These days, Americans spend over eight times that amount, two billion dollars a year, just on Botox injection to extinguish their wrinkles. ‘

This is disturbing news and the great walls of history will hold the human race responsible for our actions towards the worlds suffering, yet countries in the 3rd world are obliged to spend more on debt repaying back to countries like the U.S and the U.K than helping to thwart and treat HIV/AIDS. As a nation we possible never thought that the story we would find ourselves in, is one that is weaving the worst epidemic in world history, it has murdered more people than the Black Death.

I am a follower of Christ, a passionate lover of God and I cannot sit by and watch people die and not do anything about it. I also dream of a new community, a community where love is the answer, a community where people really care, and a community where Jesus is the centre. My heart, my passion in life to be a spokeswoman for my generation and generations to come, to stand up for truth, righteousness and justice, to bring hope, restoration and joy to those who are broken. I want to run with an authentic passion, to laugh a life of risk and of tenacity, to jump with leaps of faith and to live with barrels of laughter. I don’t want to live a life of mediocrity, I don’t want to glide through a meaningless existence. I was not created just to sit, to do an ordinary 9-5 office job. None of us were. We were created to have a giant, colossal effect on planet earth. Whether that’s through one small conversation or thousands of words, we were created from the beginning to be nation changers, to be passionate, extravagant worshippers of God, that through our actions, bring heaven to earth.

Jesus was a man of righteousness. He was a man who lived a life of love, who lived a life of peace but who also lived a life that stood up for what He knew was wrong. He stood up against the hypocritical religious leaders who were distorting the original meaning of the law. Righteous anger stirred up inside of Him and instead of sitting there and letting things go by, he stood up and declared “this generation will be held responsible for the murder of all God’s people.”- Luke 11: 50, NLT.

As followers of Christ, we cannot sit by and let our world be decimated by the evil atrocities that are being done. We need to stand up, we need to let righteous anger inside rise up, and we need to become active. We need to believe that our world can change, not with a passionless, apathetic faith but with a relentless ardour that desperately, urgently and sincerely believes that our world can and will change. It must change. We need to believe that an army of believers who hold the values of faith, hope and love at the centre of their hearts are rising and taking their place in their world and saying that we will change the world, that together we can. We need to be the person who stands in the gap and intercedes for our world, who stands in the gap between life and death and does whatever it takes to bring the world out of the desolate and wretched state that she is in. And so with this, like other followers, I have decided to love God, love life and love people even more.

“This is our call to action, our invitation to move mountains and so reshape the social and spiritual landscape of our world. Yes change is impossible through human effort alone. But faith brings God’s creative power into our global crises, so the imposable first becomes possible and then inevitable for those who believe. Mountains can be moved and everything can change, beginning with our stories, beginning with faith, beginning now, and beginning with us.” – Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change