Beyond Surrender

Prologue

     We eased through the noisy crowd of overheated bodies surging through the heavy air. Elegantly robed men in embroidered tunics which swept the ground, brushed past us. Ragged tee shirts damp with perspiration covered bony shoulders. Wrap skirts of once vibrant African cloth licked colorless by the sun’s harsh rays, hung limply against sinewy limbs. Our white skin stood out; a stark contrast with the rich, deep brown of those streaming around us. The village’s sun-hardened compounds were bursting with people. Some drank home-brewed palm wine with their backs propped against a rough clay hut. Some ate bits of animal parts hidden in a hot pepper sauce. Others danced to pounding, multifaceted rhythms that burst from the hands of a group of drummers whose solemn expressions transformed into wide toothy grins as a young girl, her hair twisted into a multitude of long black spikes, laid a gift of roasted pig heads at their feet. Jarring, unintelligible music exploded through huge generator-powered speakers. Scattered here and there makeshift shanties constructed of palm branches mounted on limbs scavenged from the bush, created bits of undulating shade in a sea of hot light.

      It was the tenth anniversary of Etienne’s father’s death. In life his birthday had never been celebrated. No one’s birthday ever is. But voodoo custom mandated the celebration of his death to respectfully honor and worship him. He was to be remembered and his spirit appeased. Without a memorial ceremony the family believed they would suffer great harm from his father’s dissatisfied, angered spirit.

      We watched as traditional dancers, their faces devilishly masked and bodies costumed in skirts made from torn paper, mounted tall, wooden stilts that were incautiously tied to their legs. In wild bursts of energy, dictated by frenzied drumbeats, they recklessly kicked their legs high into the air in a crazed spin, nearly striking the rowdy crowd. Shrieking fear and pleasure the spectators tossed coins to the dancers through the billowing dust. One sweaty stilt-walker plopped himself onto the weather-beaten tin roof of a nearby hut, his wooden legs extended to the ground far below him, to watch yet another spectacle, the pole dance.

      Raised in the middle of the dirt compound was a thirty-foot, slender, bamboo pole, with a tiny crossbar nailed at the very top. We stared in shock as a young, masked man climbed the pole and performed acrobatic stunts from the flimsy bar. No net protected him from a sudden fall. No rope secured him to the trembling pole. With abandon he stood, flipped and hung on one leg from the dizzying height. His grand finale was to descend, head first, in a slow slide to the ground. The raucous mob roared their approval and lifted their arms to catch him in the final feet of his descent.

      My husband, Jeff, and I had hoped to share Christ with these people, but found ourselves unable to utter a single understandable word to one another, let alone to anyone else, above the din.

      We couldn’t blend in. Our every body movement, every reaction glaringly contrasted culturally with the tide of African revelers. Yet, we somehow felt completely comfortable in these bizarre surroundings. That was God. If someone had told me several years before that we would be standing one day in the middle of what seemed to be a National Geographic special and loving it, I’d have laughed.

      As the day fell behind the palm-treed horizon, and cooler temperatures crept across this remote corner of the earth, Bernadette invited us into her simple home. Quickly she brought in two chairs, scraped them around until they were almost level on the uneven dirt floor, dusted them with a shredded piece of cloth, and offered them to us. Her tiny tin lantern, made of a battered tomato-paste can, barely illuminated the space where we sat. She owned nothing but an old, hand-sawn, wooden table and the mat upon which she slept. Yet, graciously, she set before us a tremendous gift, two warm, syrupy Cokes. But, these weren’t her greatest gift. Her greatest gift was her spoken greeting, a greeting we had never heard before. A greeting we would carry in our hearts the rest of our lives.

      “Greetings in your love for people.”

      We hadn’t spoken a word. Yet, Christ’s love had spoken through us.

      That is what being here in Africa is all about, living out our love for Christ and the adventure of loving people to Christ.

      Come, walk the adventure with us.