May 2003

It was the mid-80's and famine had gripped West Africa for successive years: crops failed, wells evaporated, and worst of all, children died. By the thousands.

We were there on purpose.

No heroes, we were simply representing thousands of Christians in northeast Ohio who had offered prayers, given money and believed in helping African famine victims through agencies like World Relief and World Vision. The body of Christ reached out with compassion again - this time to mainly-Muslim people groups in West Africa.

When you see malnourished kids clinging to desperate parents, when you walk through shallow graves hastily dug in the desert sand, when you gulp multiple medications to stave off disease in your own body, it doesn't take long to think purposefully about issues of physical survival, health and safety.

Thankfully, we also saw plenty of evidence that Christian-sponsored relief and development efforts were making a difference. Deep wells were dug, and they usually hit water. Clean water. Sanitation projects, medical camps, eye salve handouts, irrigation projects and soil reclamation activities .... all eased the suffering and prepared the way for a better day.

But, with the awkward admixture of human suffering and heroic progress flashing before our very eyes, I could not escape a deeper reality: there were hardly any churches, hardly any national Christians in what is called French West Africa. One of the countries, in fact, functioned as an official "Islamic Republic," meaning - among other things - that evangelism in Jesus' name was forbidden and conversion to Christianity was illegal.

Sometimes it takes radical changes in our physical and spiritual environment to rivet our attention on our ultimate purpose. And so it was that a friendly Muslim man walked alongside us one day as we examined the deep well project in his village, and he asked the question, one I shall never forget.

"We have Muslim brothers and sisters who have not helped us. You are what they call . . . Christians," he said hesitantly. "Why have you come?"

That question allowed us to get right to our purpose, or rather God's purpose - - to love, relieve suffering, to forgive and heal, to reconcile us through Christ. So far as we know, our Muslim friend had never heard about the compassion of Christ for all people or about personal salvation; he could hardly believe the part about grace and mercy and assurance of forgiveness. But he listened. And God's purpose for him began to make some sense.

Jesus lived with humble, yet conspicuous purpose in troubled times. "For the Son of man," he said, "has come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10) And each of us who follow Jesus need a reinvigorated sense of our purpose under His Lordship, a vision that inspires both our words of witness and our acts of service. I am praying that our yearly meeting, July 19-22, will be just such a time of renewal as we focus on the theme, "People of Purpose In a Broken World"

Hope you'll come. Purposefully and with prayer.