Books to Enjoy

Are you doing the Hungry Months Challenge with us? 

Are you doing the Hungry Months Challenge with kids?

If you answered yes to either of those questions....or even neither of them, I have a book recommendation for you!

This is the Anna Hibiscus series. Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. Even though the series is set in a different African country than the one we lived in, the books are filled with stories that are so relatable for our family.

We loved the whole series, but if you were only going to chose one book from the series Love from Anna Hibiscus introduces the young character to the food insecurity of her friends in the village. Reading about her wrestling with inequity is a gentle way to bring the background of the Hungry Months Challenge into our young children's world as well.

Enjoy!

The One About Enemies

The defining disappointment of our summer trip was not being able to go all the way "home." We crossed an ocean, but were unable to make the final leg to our ministry site due to a recent increase in terrorist activity along the route to home. In watching the country's security deteriorate and the people suffer there is anger, frustration, disappointment, "the feeling of utter helplessness, the acute sense of injustice, the irrationality of it all."

Last night my small group addressed these very emotions by using the language of the Psalms to address our enemies. 

"Praying these prayers is a matter of honestly naming our experience of enemies - the rage, the sorrow, the feeling of utter helplessness, the acute sense of injustice, the irrationality of it all - in order to entrust one's enemies to God." (Open and Unafraid)

I used Psalm 58:7, 10 in this way:
"Let the terrorists vanish like water that flows away;
when they plant IEDs, let their
explosions fall short...
The righteous will be glad when they are
avenged,
when the displaced people dip their feet in the blood of
the ones who killed their husbands and fathers."

How does it hit you? Is it a relief to put raw anger out there for God? Or are you afraid lightening will strike me for using words like dipping feet into the blood of the terrorists? In our discussion, both reactions were represented. Ultimately, the goal is not revenge, but healing. A God who knows the whole story can be trusted to make things right. He is on the side of wholeness. Even His wrath is working towards redemption.

On my best days I can perceive the terrorists' violence within their pursuit of holiness. On my best days I can say, like their countrymen whose lives are impacted by the terrorism much more than mine, "Everything God does is good." On my best days I can set God free to bless their pursuit of Him. And on the days I pray they would vanish like water? A God who knows the whole story can chime in with me or can shake his head at my short-sightedness. Either way, He is not offended. Either way, He scoops a hurting child into his lap. Either way, He invites you and me to relinquish our enemies to the One who gave his life for them and for us.