Not Quite Finished

I have written about Wiki in my book. A modern day Job. A servant who has been a faithful servant to God all of his life. Yet throughout his life God has chosen to make him and his family suffer over and over again. 

Wiki is a pastor of a church in western Kenya. He actually started another church that he oversees near to his church. At the time Kate and I were moving from Kenya to South Sudan, Wiki was our gardener and guard at our home. He wanted to come with us to SS to help plant churches and disciple people there. I told him there was a civil war going on and that it was not a safe place for him. He still insisted on coming – and wound up staying 5 years. I’m not going to go over all the struggles that he and his family have gone through over the years (it’s in my book) but I just got a message from him that is ripping my heart apart.

His youngest son, Mark, who was kidnapped from his dormitory a couple of years ago by satanists, was coming home from graduating college last night and was on a matatu (a transport van) that was involved in an accident – very common for matatus. The message I received this morning informed me that yet another child of his has died. This has made me very confused at God. I don’t even know what to write about it now….

I know the story of Job in the Bible. In the last chapter, after all of his suffering, questioning by his friends, even his questioning of God, he was richly blessed by God. So, I am wondering, in this day and age, is God going to richly bless his faithful servant, Wiki, like he blessed Job? Then again, we have encountered many faithful servants in our years overseas, who died while still fairly young. In South Sudan where there is very limited medical care, many have gone to heaven earlier than we expected. I think about one pastor there, Shadrack, who contracted AIDS and passed away in his 30s. Many others like him.

I can only go back to the verses in Isaiah 55.8-9, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” These verses have been my comfort and my stability over the many years that I have served the Master. There have been so many things that have occurred that I totally did not understand – and Wiki is a sad example of that – that I could not have continued on following the God of the universe without this knowledge. I am grateful that Wiki has that same mindset. Wiki’s last line in his text to me was, “Yesterday was not easy with us, but God is in control”