Rejoice and Keep Praying

Later that afternoon

We were over a dozen women sitting around a mat, laughing and joking and enjoying each other.  Almost all islanders. Representatives from all three islands. Come together to celebrate a holiday about life coming out of death. All united about the new life they have found or are finding for themselves. There was a baby, young children, big kids, teenagers, single women and mothers. A few men     hung around the edges, but there was conversation, singing, eating, studying and prayer among all.  It was a joy-filled day of celebrating. We were happy.

During last week’s English Club, one of our regular participants was leading and he was challenging the group to be happy with what they have and not to want more. I found myself a little uncomfortable. While I was happy to hear him promote contentment as opposed to greed, jealousy or complaining, some of his explanation seemed to encourage complacency, fatalism and apathy.

How do we hold onto contentment while still striving for something better? (Now, hopefully you realize I’m not talking about possessions and wealth. If we are just talking about money and things, then by all means let us be content without striving for more.) The situations I’m thinking about are the situations in our communities, the journey of our own growth and development, and the growth and maturity of the people we are mentoring. These are situations where the need for growth is always there and where the ultimate good that we are striving for can feel far away.

Dressed up for the holiday

Suddenly contentment without complacency seems complicated.

It seems there are two dangers. First is not being content at all. We can get caught up in the negatives. We forget to rejoice. We forget to be thankful for the positive things we see.  We complain but still may not see a way out or forward.

The other danger is feeling a false contentment that tells us, “well I guess this is as good as it gets.” We choose to overlook or accept bad things . We look at worse situations to feel better. We permit ourselves or our communities to stall and plateau without encouraging it onwards.

We don’t want to fall into either trap. As we looked around on Sunday morning, most of the time it was easy to be happy. There were so many smiling faces and true enjoyment. There was the clear answer to our prayers from years ago, to see island women gathered in just such a community. It is exciting and heartwarming. But we were not blind to the fact that it wasn’t the ideal for which we are ultimately hoping.   So many divided families.  So few men.  Some we would love to see making more effort to grow.  We do not want to fall into the temptation to complain or get bogged down in the negatives. Progress has been made! Let us rejoice and be thankful!

But let us keep praying. We want to see families. We want to see healthy marriages. We want to see maturity. We want to see unity. We want to see more groups.  Ten years ago we may have despaired that a dozen island women would ever gather themselves for such an event, let us look forward to the next big step forward with hope and faith. 

PRAYERS ANSWERED

We are thankful for the joy and fellowship we were able to share with islanders this weekend.  We got to see our good friend Ma Imani over the weekend.  It was mutually encouraging.  We are thankful that the second round of voting in the country appears to have occurred peacefully. Language concentration went well. We all learned new things and hopefully will be applying them to our conversations and interactions with islanders!


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Let us pray big prayers—that this weekend was a glimpse of greater things.  Pray for families, healthy marriages, brothers and sisters growing into maturity, and more brothers and sisters in the family.  A friend of ours who is a journalist has been put in prison.  He is not the only journalist to suffer this fate in recent weeks.  Pray for justice and freedom in the islands and for the imprisoned journalists to be set free.  Our teammate has been having a little trouble finding a good time to gather the women she is studying with and Tom’s “group” has been just one guy for the past few weeks.  Pray for the members to be committed to these times of study and that all excuses and impediments to their coming would stop.  Our teammate who has been in the States for the past four months arrives this week.  Pray for her safe arrival and for a good transition back to the islands.