Missionary
“The plane will land in twenty minutes Mr. President.”
I wonder what it is like…being one of the most powerful men in the modern world, but unable to help, simply powerless, against it’s ravaging affects. What is going through his mind as the plane begins to descend, as he realizes that in mere minutes, he is going to be standing in the midst of hundreds, in the midst of thousands, in the midst of tens of thousands of children. Children who are parentless, hopeless, and some even homeless. Children from a country where AIDS has stolen their mothers, stolen their fathers and caused older brothers and older sisters to become the caretakers, hope givers, and sustainers. Children, who if born in our country, wouldn’t even be old enough to play on the playground without supervision… yet here they stand as the leaders of their family.
I see him thinking back to legislation he has passed, thinking on the aide and help that has been sent, thinking about the good reports he has heard from the field, re-visiting the positive media clips that have been shedding light on this horrible epidemic… I can picture the whispers in his mind saying… ”are we doing all we can?” That moment of second guessing, of self doubt… He gathers himself and realizes this issue is much greater than him. He is the bringer of hope. I can almost hear the whispered prayer… ”God help us.” He will have to constantly focus… work so hard to keep those thoughts of desperation and despair scrambling around in his brain from ever making it to his facial expression. His face must say… hope… and nothing less.
I can see him taking off his jacket and loosening his tie… thinking about it for a moment and then finally removing the tie and gently placing it into the beige Italian leather seat that is littered with seven mainstream newspapers from the morning. He rolls up his sleeves and wipes perspiration off of his brow with a stark white handkerchief engraved with the initials GWB. You see this is the part of his job that has to be the hardest. The speeches, the legislation, dealing with global wars and global economies… we cannot even comprehend those decisions… those pressures… but this one… hurting children… children with little or no hope… is something we can understand… maybe not comprehend… but at least muster up enough energy to know the high level of difficulty this task will entail.
“The plane has landed Mr. President.”
I can picture him stepping off the plane into the makeshift runway that is hewn from mowed down grass and dirt so dry that it might as well be concrete. The dignitaries line the way. All bowing out of respect. I can see him bowing back… but out of the corner of his eye… I imagine he is looking down the line to the children. As he approaches them… they cheer. Though they have never seen him… though they don’t even know his name… they understand that this white shirted man with blue pants and black shoes is somebody quite different… somebody quite special. Many have walked dozens of miles just to see his face. They cheer him as if he is bringing gifts of grandeur… instead of a simple gesture of wellbeing and hope. I imagine it all so clearly… yet this next part I do not have to imagine at all because I have heard Mr. President speak to this very moment several times.
As he begins to walk away from the children… he looks for just a few words to speak to them that might clearly state the hope and prayer that he brings on behalf of his country. He looks at them with a simple smile and states… God is good. There is but a second of silence, and then all of a sudden, against the sound of engines humming, and the sound of people yelling “Mr. President… Over Here Sir”… he hears the most unusual, the most amazing sound coming back from the children… the sound of their reply… ALL THE TIME!
As I step away from this story, I believe that this is one of those moments that will forever change a president. Can you imagine standing in the midst of hopeless children and attempting to minister by saying the phrase “God is good”… but instead, being ministered to as these children who have every right to be angry, every right to be hopeless, and every right to be bitter… yell back … “all the time!” God is good…all the time! This tells me two things. Both are so important and true that I am not quite sure what order to present them.
One being the reality that God is good all the time… even in the middle of an AIDS epidemic. He is still all loving, all powerful, all caring. They caught that. It is we who mess THIS truth up by getting so sideways at the least little circumstance that doesn’t fall our way. The next time it rains…God is good. The next time it pours….all the time. No matter what the storm may be.
The other… no less important than the first, is that someone told them, someone taught them, someone in the name of Jesus, came to these hopeless children and demonstrated love. Who was it? I don’t know. How did they do it? I don’t know. But I know this… in their lives… somewhere… was planted a missionary. A voice of truth and love. Oh… I would have given anything to be the person who planted that seed. I would have given anything to be the person who got to water that seed. And I would have given anything to have been Mr. President on that day… to see the flowering of that hope.
May we remember that God is good. But may we also remember that He is good all the time. May we not be dismayed at the most discouraging of all circumstances but may we recognize…..
“With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” –Jesus speaking in Matthew 19:26