Independence at Last! Thank God!

A little over a week ago we celebrated the birth of our nation.  235 years ago our forbearers fought for independence and freedom.  About 4,400 people sacrificed their lives for the cause in the fighting that took place.  Today, we enjoy the fruits of their decade long struggle.  As we look back, we see the hand of God at work in the midst of the pain and despair, bringing freedom to many people who had not known it before! 

This past Saturday, I had the honor of celebrating the birth of another new nation: The Republic of South Sudan.  In my work with new ministries that I do for Bishop Usgaard I spend a lot of time with Sudanese refugees.  These men and women have taught me much about the struggles that they faced in the civil war that raged since 1983.  They talk about being machine gunned while worshipping.  They talk about children eaten by alligators as they fled the fighting.  The talk about the staggering death toll: over 2.5 million people died in the conflict.  To put that in perspective, if you add together all of the war-time deaths from every war that America fought in our history, from the Revolution to the Civil War to World War II to the Gulf War…less than 1 million Americans who have died.  When you hear of the horrific deaths in Darfur (another part of Sudan), somewhere around 300,000 have died.  Against that perspective, 2.5 million deaths is hard to even imagine.  Few in South Sudan have not been touched by the pain.  Entire villages were wiped out.  Families were shattered.  People starved.  Despite all the pain, people fought on.  People prayed that a new day would dawn: a day of peace and hope.

On Saturday, July 9^th, God answered their prayers!  Following a peace agreement in 2005 and a referendum in January of this year, the Republic of South Sudan joined the nations of the world.  No longer will the Africans be second class citizens to the Arabs who controlled Sudan for decades.  No longer will the Sudanese government be able to send troops into the villages of the south, killing people with abandon.  The South Sudanese have the opportunity to choose their own leaders and their own freedoms.  God worked to bring peace!

Last Saturday I was honored to be invited to a gathering in Rochester where the people of South Sudan who live in southern Minnesota got together to celebrate! Tears flowed as the flag of South Sudan was raised.  Some elderly women slowly walked to the front and then burst into dancing with their canes held high.  I couldn’t help but get caught up in the moment!  After years of amazing hardships, God had acted to bring peace and independence.

We proclaim a God who works in the world…but we also proclaim a God who gives humans the freedom to make choices.  The Sudanese government made choices that led to 2.5 million deaths.  Choice has consequences.

After decades of pain, despair, and death, God has worked through imperfect people like Omar Bashir and John Garang to bring peace.  May God continue to use imperfect people to bring about peace in places like Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan.

Trusting sounds so easy

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
   and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
   and he will make your paths straight.

(Proverbs 3:5-6)

Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed (to Jesus), “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

 (Mark 9:24)

Trust in the Lord.  It sounds so straightforward…so simple.  We can place our lives in God’s hands and trust that God will care for us.  Deep in my heart, I know that this is certainly true…so why did I have so much anxiety last week?

As many of you know, we at Peace Lutheran Church are all set to build our first building this summer.  We officially break ground during our worship service this coming Sunday!  All the pieces are in place: the building permit, the builders, the sub-contractors, the zoning.  At the beginning of last week everything was in place; everything, that is, except the loan!  Through some preliminary conversations with the Mission Investment Fund (the folks we get a loan through) we’d been given the impression that this would be as simple as sending in an application and receiving approval.  Apparently the person in charge of underwriting the loan didn’t receive that memo!  Last Wednesday I took part in a conference call that made my stomach hurt.  They didn’t know if they could process the loan.  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

We’d applied for a $500,000 loan with the understanding that the pledges towards our building project more than covered the monthly payments on a mortgage.   The rule of thumb that the underwriter worked from stated that we could only count 75% of the pledges.  We’d also been told it would be amortized over 20 years, but, as a Mission Congregation receiving a special rate, the loan would be amortized over 15 years.  Put those two things together and we no longer had the ability to make monthly payments.  Our loan was being referred to a committee to review our ‘special situation.’   There was a real possibility that we’d have a ground breaking celebration…with no loan in place!  Was it possible that the whole project would get scuttled?  After celebrating the coming building project, would we have to stop and say, “Oops, sorry!”  Can you imagine the impact that would have on this congregation?  Needless to say, I had a couple sleepless nights.  This is why we asked for your prayers!  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

The good news was that the bids on the project had come in much lower than we’d anticipated.  While we originally thought we needed a $500,000 loan, the reality is that we only needed $420,000 to do all that we wanted to do.  We sent the revised numbers to the Mission Investment Fund and received approval the next day.  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

Why was it so hard to trust?  Through this process we’ve constantly talked about God leading us forward.  We’ve prayed over and over that God would guide the building process.  Would God lead us that far down the road, only to pull the rug from under us?  I should have slept like a baby last week, knowing that God led us in God’s paths.  I didn’t.  I allowed the anxieties of this world overcome my simple trust in the God who provides.  God remained faithful.

I join the father speaking to Jesus in Mark chapter 9, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”  May God continue to teach me to trust.