Today we went to the government hospital in Mbabane, the
capital city of Swaziland. We prayed
outside the doors asking the Lord to guide our conversation and guide our
steps. I don't know if we could have
prepared ourselves for what we were about to see. We all split up and I ended up in the
children's ward. The first child I came
to was extremely thin and I knew he was sick just by looking at him. As I leaned in to hear his whispered voice
tell me he was fine, his tiny fingers wrapped around mine. His mother came over
and told me he had meningitis and had been in the hospital for 3 weeks
now. I don't know much about meningitis
but I knew this boy was not doing well. Frequently, his eyes would roll in the back of his head as he was lying
there but every now and again his small hand would give me a squeeze to make
sure I was there. As I stood there
silently praying for him, I remembered what it was like when my little sister
was in the hospital and how distraught my family became. The mother informed me she slept there with
him on the concrete floor of the hospital. Apparently, all the mothers who were there did the same thing night
after night. My heart broke for her as I
imagined what it would be like for this young mother to lose her only
child. What do you say in this
situation? How do I offer hope? Can I tell her that everything is going to be
ok and just go about my day as if it is? God reminded me of Romans 15:13 which says, " May the God of hope fill you with all joy
and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power
of the Holy Spirit." So, I asked if I
could pray for her and prayed that her trust would be in God and that He alone
would fill her with the hope that she needed to get through this. 

After this, I felt the people in the room needed some
uplifting conversation so I sat down and told them why I was there and asked if
they could teach me some SiSwati. As I
attempted to pronounce the words, laughter filled the room. They took great delight in seeing me struggle
to say certain things. I just can't seem to make my mouth click without
sounding completely dumb! They had me guess their ages and we joked about why I
was not married yet. For a while, I
could almost see the sadness leave their eyes. 

At this time, I see this tiny old woman with two teeth
shovel in with a child on her hunched back. She placed her in the one open bed and looked up at me with a half
smile. I walked over and introduced
myself and in her broken English and my awful Siswati, I figured out she was
the grandmother of this child. The child was struggling to breath and the woman
informed me that it was asthma and probably tuberculosis. It hurt me so bad to watch this young child.
I didn't have words except, "Jesus, please help her to breath. Jesus, open up
her lungs." I repeated these words over
and over. Her breathing began to slow
but was still a struggle for her. This poor gogo (grandmother) has probably
seen her children die which has left her to now care for her grandchild. And
now, she has to sit back and watch her granddaughter fight for air. I don't know what must have been going
through her mind. I can't even imagine
being in her situation. It seems so
unfair that there is such immense suffering here and yet I have great health
and the means to take care of any health situation if it were to arise. 

Do I trust that God is Sovereign over everything? Can God
take any situation and turn it around for good? Yes. I have to hold on to that
Truth. Romans 8:28 tells us that we know
that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. There have been many times in my life where I
did not see the good in a situation; where it may have seemed like the worse
thing that could have happened. Then, in hindsight, I see how God worked and
how that awful circumstance taught me, shaped me, and molded me into the person
God desires me to be. I see how He has
been glorified and how I have grown closer to Him during these hard times. Do I have to understand why things happen?
No, that's not my job. I have to trust
that the God of hope will be faithful as He has always been in the past. I have to know in my heart that He can and
will turn every situation, even death, into something good. I have to know that
when Christ died on the cross, God was the most unfair He has ever been. I deserve death. It's not fair for me to have
a gift of grace that allows me to live for eternity. I am thankful that God is not fair in giving
what we deserve. I am thankful that
because He was not fair, there is now hope for us all. There is hope for the
single mother whose child has meningitis and hope for the gogo watching her grandchild
struggle to breath.  I don't understand death and I don't know if I
ever will but I do know that we have a hope that goes beyond this lifetime. We have a Savior who redeemed us all!