death by hunger in this age?

I've never been politically inclined, the first vote I cast was last year during the referundum for a new constitution, and at next year's general election I don't even have an idea about who I'm going to vote for. But of late, thanks to my adamant-about-news-hour peers I've began to watch news, and the things that are going on!!!
It's a most painful death, dying of hunger, and today I saw people literally dying of hunger, and here we are making ugali and discarding whatever's left of it without a second thought. It's a wonder just how much we have been taught to ignore, to miss, how we can walk past that man sitting with a bowl on the street, how we can watch the news, blame our politicians and then go to bed and sleep sound. Now, I'm new into this having-a-political-opinion thing, but I think those people in government have always been, forgive me not, douchebags, they've always looked out for themselves and, but for divine intervention, shall continue to do so for a while. But like my good friend Iddi says, we're just as self-seeking. A nation is its people, we elect those douchebags, we gnash our teeth at them but then give them our vote next time they come back to ask for it, because the other candidate doesn't belong to the right gender, or tribe, or party. Once in a while, a new kid moves to the block, all fiesty, as Ababu Namwamba did, then the older kids threaten and/or buy their silence, and the vicious cycle begins. And secretly, we all wish for our chance to "eat". Because, as the Bible says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, no one can truly know it except the Lord Himself. You may want to say that if you went there you wouldn't do that, but I don't think that's really true. It's hard to turn down a bribe when everything's falling apart and you know your next month's payslip's going to read some negative value. Even if, like me, your greatest need as yet is a pair of shoes in every colour imaginable (especially pink). It's human, and we do need to be saved from ourselves.
Well, that we need salvation was not the point I was going to make, it's my point every time, but anyway, I don't think counting on our leaders to sort our country out may not bear fruit now, especially with elections coming up in a year. It's gotta start with me. I'm not particularly crazy about Bob Collymore, but what they've done with the Kenyans4Kenya, giving us an opportunity to help with whatever little we can, they've done well. I only wish I was able to do more. But I can do more, I can pray, because this country really needs healing that only the Lord can give.
So I'm going to take a stand, I'm going to stand in the gap on behalf of this nation. Christ made the vilest men clean, there is no situation so grave that His blood didn't already cover it. God will heal our land, He will restore our soil, He will send rain and the awesome part is that He doesn't really need the government to be on His side. Especially now that the government spokeman claims that this whole people dying of hunger thing is "the media exaggerating" gava haijui vitu kaa hizo (the govt is not aware). Jehovah sees, Jehovah knows. And so, with the words of David I pray

 ¹ Unto You I lift up my eyes,
         O You who dwell in the heavens.
 ² Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters,
         As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
         So our eyes look to the LORD our God,
         Until He has mercy on us.         
 ³ Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us!
         For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.

Psalm 123, NKJV

a little ways down the road

There's this couple I saw on telly a few days back. They were really old (87 and 83), and get this, they had been married for 66 years!! Sixty six, imagine that! Even more impressive, she was enrolled in college taking some course or other, seriously HOW COOL IS THAT?!! But I got to thinking about my own marriage, something that in recent days happens more often than I'd like. These two looked beautiful, it's that picture we all want to be when we're eighty-some, sitting on the couch reminiscing about back in the day or even just saying nothing at all, just being.
Anyhow, Lady got married at 17, and as it stands I'm already five years behind her clock if ever I wanted to get to my 66th weding anniversary while still in full control of my cranial faculties ;) and even as we speak my prospects don't (yet) look too good ;)) Still, it don't stop me from dreaming, and hoping. After all, the Bible does say that hope does not disappoint, no?
I'd like to be 85 and taking a college course in something or other, still upright (literally and otherwise), still fiesty (Bless the Lord that He desires a meek and quiet spirit in a woman, but not necessarily a meek and quiet mouth!! ;)) And should it so please the King, still married to the same man I married in my youth. I'd love to  be going around the world with him, preaching  the love of Christ to those still unreached, being a mother to many sons and daughters in the faith, speaking words of grace unto those whose souls have been worn out by the storms of life.
If it pleases the King, I'd like, at the end of the day,  when tired from all the action, to retire to our home and rest with my husband,  listening to that boy go on and on passionately speaking of his dreams and ideas like he's 30 all over again, and to tell him that while they're the craziest ideas ever thought up, I still believe in him!! I'd like us to attend our great-grandchild's wedding, and to dance with him to some sweet old country number like "Love has been a friend to me" by Julio Eglesias. I'd like to still be flexible enough to get on my knees and pray for them; my children, and grandchildren and even their future generations.
And yes, should the Lord tarry in coming, and our time comes to enter into His rest, if the King so desires, I hope we go home together. Barring that, much as I may want to swallow these words come the day, I hope the Lord calls him home first. Knowing how clueless men can be, the picture of him trying to find out where I used to keep everything, trying to fix himself a meal or do his own laundry, sew a button.... well, I'd just wish he never has to. So, if the Lord so pleases, this is my desire. He says to delight in Him, and He shall give me the desires of my heart (Ps 37:4) and to commit my way unto Him with trust and He shall bring it to pass (vs 5)
So, yeah, dear Lord, these are my desires, insofar as they are Your will for me. Look upon them with many kindnesses (and also, I suppose, much much patience!!!)

Don't just do something, stand there!!!

During the second world war, there was this lady called Cornelia Ten Boom. She was a Dutch Christian, and she harboured many Jews during the Holocaust, saving an estimated 800 of them. She never married, but lived with her dad and sister in the house that came to be known as "The hiding place". Anyway, that was hardly my point. Corrie, in the course of her endeavours, suffered so much loss, including that of her father who passed away ten days after their arrest and detention at the infamous concentration camps, as well as her sister, brother and nephew. She said:

Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.

Who better to say something like that to you than the woman who almost lost everything? Like the woman who sheltered Anne Frank, Corrie's family was rutted out to the Gestapo, who amazingly, never found the six Jews the family was sheltering at the time behind a false wall in Corrie's room. After hard times at the concentration camp, where her family died, she was set free in what turned out to be a clerical error on the part of the Gestapo, since all women her age were killed a week after she had been released. About which she only says, "There is no panic in heaven!! God has no problems, only plans". Seriously, how cool was that woman??!!
I've been reading this book Lady in Waiting by Jackie Kendall and Debbie Jones. Yes, it's about mariage and yes, I'm a little too young, but more than its being about marriage it's about my relationship with Christ. It's about becoming the right woman, becoming the Woman of Excellence God created me to be ASIDE from every other variable: husband, family et al. The biggest lesson I've learnt in that book is patience. We live in a world where all efforts are going towards getting everything now: microwaves, faster cars, faster planes, computers with more powerful processors and bigger RAMs so you can do everything simultaneously faster, faster internet, name it. And having been sucked in to this concept waiting is a foreign thing to me, yet the Bible is full of verses about waiting on the Lord, from Isa 40:31 to Lam 3:26-28 to many more.
But I think the only reason we don't want to wait, the only reason we'd rather be doing something to get us where we want to be is that we have believed the lie satan feeds us over and over again, "God helps those who helps themselves'. Probably one of the biggest heresies of all times. Where did He ever tell anyone, "Just do what you're able to, then I'll pick up from there"? There's this verse in Isaiah:

I am the LORD: that is My name: and My glory I will not give to another, neither My praise to graven images (42:8)

God's not going to kick in when you do what you can then reach your end. See, the glory's gotta be aaall His!! Corrie says that you can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have. For as long as you have a fallback plan, God will let you work it. But as soon as you come to your end, and have done all you know to do and are stuck, with Him as your only option, that's the time He'll come through, proving Himself to you in ways you never even thought possible. But first, you've got to wait.You've got to stand still. And I think it takes more energy to stand still.  So we want to cling to our little treasure boxes, we want to gather around ourselves hoards of things that can 'give us security', so that in times of danger, we'll be alright. But that doesn't work either, it doesn't keep us when the rainy days come. The peace that Corrie had, the grace to forgive her father's killers and to give her food and time and kindness to the other prisoners in the camps, that didn't come from some storehouse within. She says (of the man who came to ask her for forgiveness concerning her father's death):

Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.

The best thing you can ever do is to wait on the Lord. I'll conclude with another of Corrie's lines:

Dear Jesus...how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here!!