Emmanuel Mukeshimana, Langham Scholar, Rwanda/Uganda
March 2020
I am now speechless, I do not know how to begin with my reflection, but in times like this, it is where we see God at work.
This last Sunday was the first day of family service due to the ban of public gathering. Our service went on very well in which we did a duplication of what we do at Church where all members of the family participated (a preacher, offertory, choir, children’s corner etc). What amazed me is that the young ones enjoyed it so much to the extent that every morning they are knocking on our bedroom door asking whether we are having our church service again!! Of course for them they do not understand what is happening and may be having Dad and Mum one preaching another singing in a sitting room is their first experience!
Lockdown
Here in Uganda so far we have 18 cases as for Friday 27 March, and several quarantined mostly from outside of the country. Today it is our second day in the lockdown whereby public transportation including Bodabodas (motorcycles carrying passengers) are not allowed for two weeks. Other movements can be done in a private car not exceeding 3 passengers.
I do not know how the gravity of COVID-19 looks like in your country but around here people eat because they have worked for that day. Stocking food is not a common practice, either you get it from your garden or the market. If the problem persists we do not know how we shall survive.
My question is how can I intervene in this situation, I have been thinking of providing food items for a day to the hungry but another thought came in to give Bibles to those who cannot afford them.
Prayers and Fasting
25 years ago, bugs/mosquitoes invaded our village and we didn’t know what to do, we organized a day of prayer and fasting in different churches. To my surprise different people including myself dreamed of having insecticide spraying all over the village. The following morning we found that all the mosquitoes had disappeared.
You have heard about the wild locusts which invaded East Africa. Just last week I was chatting with someone from the area I thought was affected and he said, ��Locusts came to our village thinking that the worst has just come, helicopters had been hired, special soldiers had been deployed to spray them, but with prayer, one day we woke up and there was no single locus, you could see around, they all died with natural death.” Today as I write no story of locusts!! Amazing!!
God knows what is happening
The way it came is the way it will go, let us pray as we follow the directives from our church and state leaders one day we shall wake up and hear that Covid 19 is no more. There is a lesson God is teaching us worldwide, let us pay attention to his message. This sickness is for all categories of people small and big, rich and poor, kings and slaves, the powerful and the weak in fact no one is spared.
On Sunday in our home church we shared Exodus 4:1-6, God asking Moses what he has in his hand. A staff can be a snake and back to a staff in one second as long as it is God saying it. This week I called my pastor back home and he said, “Daniel in Lion’s den, perhaps one lion was his mattress, another his pillow and another his blanket. We don’t know exactly what happened down there, the only thing we all know is that he was picked out unharmed ”. Whatever you are going through you are here to leave a story behind.
Friends God knows what is happening let us listen very well to what he is communicating to us in such a time as this.