A constant tension

There are always terrible reminders to bring one crashing back down to earth after a nice holiday or an encouraging day of work or a fun afternoon of soccer. Those good times are constantly juxtaposed with stories and experiences of suffering. The last two days have been a true study in that tension.

Yesterday afternoon (my birthday), I flew with Heidi and Ashley in a little cessna over the mountains an to Kampala. I got to fly co-pilot, had some great views of the mountains and the crater lakes around Fort Portal, and just had fun flying. It was a nice birthday present, and that was before dinner. I was lucky enough to be in Kampala for my birthday dinner, which we spent at a nice Belgian restaurant where I ordered a good, rare steak, a nice bottle of wine, and a deep dish of ice cream (the girls even got the waiter for put a candle on it). Splurging? Probably. It was a great birthday meal.

But earlier that day I had delayed the plane, because I was driving a 12 year old boy from the health center to the hospital a half hour away for an emergency appendectomy. Luckily, he came through his surgery (none too soon) and is recovering. At the health center we also had a young boy with sickle-cell disease who had just had a stroke, and died this morning, with no one able to do anything to prevent it. But as if those difficulties of the morning weren't enough, arriving in Kampala we found this headline on the web "Ugandan rebels massacre hundreds at church in Congo." In the last few weeks, after Joseph Kony (leader of the LRA) failed for the third time to show up to peace talks, the Ugandan, Congolese, and Southern-Sudanese armies launched a joint offensive against the LRA in the territory they control, where these countries meet. While it's hard to know what reports to believe, it was seeming to be rather effective, but now it is clear that it has also stirred the LRA back into its brutal, savage, child-enslaving life. The day after Christmas, rebels attacked a church service in a village in eastern Congo and slaughtered almost around 150 people, mostly women and children, with machetes and clubs. The horror and brutality of it is almost incomprehensible. It was difficult even to read about it, realizing that this is not a movie or a book, but something happening in real time. It's a terrible reminder of the brokenness and horror of the world we live in.

(As a note of assurance, this is not anywhere near Bundibugyo, but much farther north. The LRA exists in north-western Uganda, southern Sudan, and north-eastern Congo, a long way from where I live in south-western Uganda.)

So, sometimes I feel like I exist between extremes, never knowing where to find reality. Between stories of recovery and health, and those of slowly wasting away to death. Between big, happy smiles on the neighborhood kids faces when we're playing and the fact that they often don't have enough to eat. Between great meals in Kampala and inhuman brutality. It makes life confusing, it makes me ashamed of my ability to enjoy those nice meals or good medical care, and it leaves me clueless as to how I am supposed to respond to a world full of both beauty and ugliness, love and hate, rejoicing and suffering.