Holy Ground 2

I apologize for the time between my last post and this one. Life has been crazy since I've been back, and I have not really had much time to just sit and write. My Kenya experience opened my eyes to where God is working in the world. There are some people whose situations in life when viewed from the outside appear to be a hell on earth. (I do believe in hell as being eternal separation from God, but I also believe that there are places on earth where people live in a hell so to speak. Ludacris actually has a good song about this called Runaway Love). One woman I actually did not get to meet, but some teammates of mine did. Her name is Lucy. Lucy is an HIV/AIDS victim who is getting helped out by an organization called WOFAK (Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya). Lucy has three kids, all of them school age. She has been bed-ridden for the past four months now. Three months ago her husband was killed after getting hit by a train coming home from work. He was her only provider as she is too weak to really get out of bed, much less work. She is now three months behind on rent in an apartment not much bigger than an Tahoe or Escalade, and she is about to be evicted from her apartment. If anybody has a bone to pick with God, it's Lucy. To an outsider, she is living hell on earth. My friends went into this apartment not knowing exactly what to expect after hearing some of her story on the walk to her apartment. As they walked in they found Lucy reading her Bible. She said to them, "This (the Bible) is my bread. This is what satisfies me." She told them that God wasn't through with her yet. In that room, my friends experienced holy ground. When they told the rest of us the story that night, there was a silence in the room. We all knew somehow that God, in the midst of this hell, had somehow exalted Lucy to a place where she finds satisfaction. No wonder James writes, "Let the poor Christian boast in their exaltation."