Tombstones and Banana Trees (15 page)

He was right. He has been a loving, caring, affirming, close, and dependable father to me. We love him, and we are proud of him. He has done an incredible work in restoring my confidence and vision of reviving the Anglican Church of Uganda. He is not only my bishop but a very close friend and spiritual father. He has prayed for me, trusted me, and protected me. He made me an acting chaplain of a big chapel even when I was still a deacon. My ministry flourished, and the church grew in quality and quantity and became one of the fastest-growing churches in Uganda. After five years of a joyful, fulfilling, and anointed ministry, he promoted me to my current post of diocesan missions, evangelism, and church-planting coordinator for the diocese of Kampala. I like this job, and I am now coordinating twenty-three congregations in the areas of mission and evangelism, discipleship and church planting, healing and deliverance. Many people are getting healed, delivered, and reconciled.

When I look back upon this journey now I can so clearly see God at work. He was never absent. He never went missing. He has always been with me. How else could anyone explain the growth of the church I planted? We tried to practice what had once been branded heretical by the bishop, bringing together the best of the Anglican tradition with openness to the Holy Spirit. I found a chapel growing with a congregation of some one thousand members, and by the time I left, there were about six thousand of us. We started with a small church and built a huge cathedral. God and God alone was the architect.

My journey along the winding roads of forgiveness was not over. In many ways I know it never will be—I still have to practice forgiveness today. But as the church grew, I knew I had to put things right with Bishop George.

So I telephoned him and told him I had forgiven him. He said, “Okay,” but nothing more. Six months later he met with Connie and me at Namirembe Guest House in Kampala. We met and sat and sorted our things out. Almost. The reconciliation did not really take place—he did not tell people in Kabale that we had fixed things, and the ban on my ministering in the area remained in place.

And then in 2005 there came the final breakthrough. I smile today when I remember the setting: an East African Revival convention meeting in Kabale. I was asked to be the translator for a visiting
muzungu
speaker who insisted I attend. He spoke about the episode from the Gospels when Jesus and His disciples were caught up in a great storm. They needed a great prayer to be answered by a great person in order to have a great landing.

Holiness, integrity, truth. These had been the hallmarks of those involved in the great revival of the past, but they were not the only traits that were valued. Repentance and forgiveness had featured just as highly. There must have been something in the air during that meeting, but I was not so aware. All I knew was that this was the first time I had taken to a stage in Kabale in years, and the conflicts had hurt me. Forgiveness had cost me.

The speaker finished his sermon, and the bishop walked onto the stage. As he reached the front he asked me to stay where I was and not to sit down just yet. And then it came—out of nowhere, it seemed to me. The bishop, in front of thousands, said the words I longed for but never thought I would hear. He said he was sorry for all he had wrongly done against me. He asked for my forgiveness. He asked for reconciliation. Then he announced that I was free to preach in any church in the diocese.

How can I explain the joy and peace between us that followed? I accepted and asked him to forgive me as well, which he did. I also asked for forgiveness from those who had been wounded by our conflicts, and the bishop asked other bishops from western Uganda to come up onto the stage and welcome me. I forgave him publicly, and Connie was called up to the front: It was like a pair of prodigals coming home! People embraced one another and sang, and there were tears after tears flowing from every one of us.

The bishop and I embraced for a long time. The tombstone had been rolled away, and Lazarus had come out. Just as Jesus told the mourners to unbind His friend and let him go, so too has the bishop continued to release me. Since that meeting he has continually invited me to preach in meetings, retreats, and conventions in his diocese. The bishop is now a very close friend of mine, and I love him, trust him, and am proud of him. He is special to me.

I had to repent of my bitterness and anger toward the bishop, and doing so added to the long list of things from which the Lord has released me: family hurts, economic hurts, academic hurts, work-related hurts, political hurts, religious hurts, sexually related hurts, and sectarian-related hurts. I am now healed, delivered, and free, and I have realized that the only way for us to be released from the past is to forgive.

What does it mean to forgive? It means obeying a direct command from God. It means following Jesus' example. It means being open to the healing and deliverance that follow. It means embracing repentance, reconciliation, and brokenness. It means seeing a release of prayer and intercession, an increase in joyfulness, and a radical rise in missionary zeal. To forgive is to grow, to live, to love. To forgive is to follow Jesus. To forgive is to leave behind the tomb and to walk out, surrounded by fresh air and new life, toward the open arms of a waiting, loving God.

Back on that stage, with all the holy chaos breaking out around us, my face covered in tears, I knew I was in the middle of a life-changing experience. The bishop's words were simple, as was our embrace, but it was nothing short of a revolution.

Chapter Thirteen

Take Off the Grave Clothes

I suppose you could say I had something in common with Lazarus. We both thought life was over. We both thought the ground had finally claimed us. We both were wrong.

Lazarus's story starts in Bethany, just two miles from Jerusalem. There he lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha, and played out his life. We know their story well: We know how they loved Jesus; we know how He loved them. We know this loving community was so strong that whenever Jesus visited Jerusalem He stayed in their home, resting in their company, finding restoration, anointing, and peace. Nothing has really changed in the two thousand years that have passed. God still wants loving homes and open communities like the one His Son was attracted to in Bethany. God is still after united families who can draw others to them. Unity still attracts a blessing, just as it did back then.

Despite all that history, I imagine it still must have been difficult for them to hold on to their trust in Jesus when things started to go wrong. But they did the right thing; they knew Jesus would help their dying brother.

This is where my story—and maybe yours—stops being similar to Lazarus's. When things go wrong, whom do we reach for first? Where is our hope located? Is prayer our first response to the crisis, or do we turn to the medics or the police or the self-help guru? You might flinch at such a charge. You might say, “But I pray about everything, and any crisis will see me on my knees.” A lot of us have learned to pray as a response to troubles. The only problem is that often the prayers last only as long as we are on our knees. As soon as we find our feet we take matters into our own hands. Once things get better our desire to pray evaporates. We are probably unaware that we are doing it, but we attempt to make ourselves feel better by shopping or eating or drinking. We may start with prayer, but our self-reliance soon takes over.

But not Mary and Martha. When the very fabric of their family was threatened, they called for Jesus. And then they waited.

Could we learn to do the same?

I was not patient. I did not trust God. I did not believe in the power of Jesus to transform. Instead I simply wanted to die. As time passed, those feelings grew stronger, but they were accompanied by new responses to pain and troubles. We turned to witch doctors when we began to worry. We went to so many of them—all the time trying to stir up so much evil instead of searching for the goodness of God—that my chest is covered with scars as a result. Ours was not the way of Mary and Martha. Ours was a party of bitterness, hatred, and control.

We know the story of Lazarus did not progress in quite the way Mary and Martha were hoping. Jesus was away—there was nothing unusual about that—but then Lazarus got sick, and Jesus was absent. What was worse was that when they sent Him a message and urged Him to return, Jesus did not show up. The Bible tells us that He did a strange thing. He did nothing. For two days He waited. We do not know what He did in the time, but we do know this: At the end of the waiting, He knew Lazarus was dead and buried. They asked Jesus to come, and He waited until their brother was dead.

We might not like it, but the truth that applies to every one of us is this: Just as Jesus was aware of Lazarus's life and death, so He is also aware of us: our sin, our weaknesses, our complaints, our pornography, our pain, our disappointment.

And just as we might not be comfortable with the idea of Jesus being aware of every aspect of our lives, we also do not like it when it appears as if the Lord withdraws from us. We do not like to be left surrounded by the corpses of the latest trials and struggles. We do not like to be reminded of the gap between what we hoped for from God and what He actually delivered. Days can turn into weeks, even months, and still it seems that our Father has chosen to delay His return to us, to hold off His presence, to keep back His voice and hands and help. Our sicknesses get worse, our pressures mount even higher, and still Jesus delays coming to our side.

So often at times like this it appears that the only option open to us is to feed on bitterness. That is what I did—for twenty years. And it left me alone. We often find ourselves alone after we have been disappointed by others, let down by those we thought were going to do better this time. But people will let us down—churches, too, which are nothing more than a collection of people—and our relationships with them will suffer. Our gurus may fall and our heroes may fail. Yet if turning to God is a familiar response, something built into the muscles and nerves of our faith, then even those darkest, loneliest nights will be relieved of the chill of isolation. We will find God in the darkness because we have known Him so well in the light.

You know by now that I did none of this when I was younger. I bore a grudge and harbored hatred. I became so good at this that when someone suggested I needed to forgive, the anger that rose within me was nothing short of volcanic.

It cannot have been easy for Mary and Martha to hold on to the hope that Jesus would heal their brother. And the death of Lazarus must have been a moment they had feared with increasing terror and confusion. They had sent for Jesus—why had He not come?

For Mary and Martha, as well as for us, the greatest truth at that time was this: God's delay is not a denial. God may delay in doing things, but that time lag does not mean He has abandoned or denied us. No matter how long we have been praying, no matter how long we have been waiting, God will show. In time—His time, perfect and boundless—God will be with us. No matter how heavy the sorrow or how long the winter, God will return.

We may have experienced the sense that things have wandered too far off course. We may be plagued with self-doubt and wonder if we really were right to count ourselves as close to Jesus. Had we not told others of His love for us? Weren't we the ones who were happy to welcome Him into every aspect of our lives? And now what? What is this silence, this absence that has fallen across our lives? Where is He? Why has He abandoned us? Why is there so much death and decay at our feet? Why are we still wearing these grave clothes?

But a funeral may not be all that it seems—especially when the body goes missing. We may think our hopes have died; we may think our dreams are just waiting to be buried. But God has other plans. For Him, our self-declared funeral can become a resurrection.

Our hope is never truly dead. It is merely asleep.

I had no idea of this as the bruises started to cause me pain when my mother and sisters and I remained in the dirt and dust at the side of the road. I had no idea that this point would be forever marked in my mind as the start of an incredible journey. I had no idea that this was not a funeral but the first glimmer of light on what would become the day of my rebirth.

Lazarus discovered this. He learned that, when we see a funeral, God sees a maternity ward. When we see decay, He sees forgiveness. When we see a boy cowering at the side of the road and hoping to die, He sees a life ahead that is full of beauty and hope and grace.

And so this is a book about two words: forgiveness and revolution. Do those words fit? Are they not just a little too distant, too far apart, to really work together?

History tells us that this cannot work, that the famous revolutions of the past have very little to do with forgiveness. Was forgiveness overflowing in the hearts of those who cheered as guillotines sliced their way through the French aristocracy? Were those early American soldiers stuffing their muskets with pity and mercy as they drove back the English soldiers? Were the Russian tsars shot because of forgiveness? I do not think so.

But just because the best-known revolutions of the past have been fueled by anger and hatred does not mean that forgiveness is not a revolutionary tool. In fact, I want to suggest that of all the weapons and the tactics, of all the guns and the bombs, the most revolutionary thing of all is forgiveness.

Of all the people in the world, there are none stronger than the people who are able to forgive.

Of all the change in the world, there is none more lasting than the change that comes from hearts full of grace and love, hearts that choose forgiveness instead of blaming and bitterness.

And of all the revolutionary acts that have ever taken place, it was the voluntary death—and resurrection—of Jesus that transformed life and death so completely.

It is almost time for this book to finish. I have told you nearly all my story, although, like any African preacher, I could go on for much longer. But I would like to end by telling you about the latest work to which I believe God's hand has directed me. My mother died in 2002, but she died a happy woman and had a glorious funeral. The bishop led the service. It was like a convention. She died after seeing all her daughters marry and four of my children born. I miss her greatly.

This new work started when I was traveling around various communities in southwestern Uganda. I saw so many children who were going through almost the same experience I knew as a child: domestic violence, extreme poverty, rejection, polygamy, abuse. I felt a burden upon me and knew I could do something to give hope to these children at risk.

Their poverty was—and is—so like mine. Across our country are children who have no access to school, who are on the streets, who go hungry, whose distended bellies are signs of malnutrition rather than full stomachs. They suffer from jiggers, head lice, and adults who see them as easy labor to be beaten and physically harassed at will.

I needed to begin a project where even just a few of them could be safe and have an education. Just as Connie and I both felt that Christianity had transformed us, so we knew we should build our work on solid Christian principles. We knew we should take in children and hand them over at eighteen, having instilled in them Christian values and restored their self-esteem; having renewed their thinking and broken cultural bondages, lifting them to a level where they can reach their potential because they know their position in Christ. He becomes the source of their security, self-worth, and significance.

So we established World Shine Ministries and a charity in the UK called World Shine Foundation, which now has plans to start in the United States as well. We want to support people who are in pain, to prepare for the healing of the nations. We want people to shine for Christ wherever they are in order to bring healing and community transformation.

We started by sharing our vision with people. A man who heard us talk gave fourteen thousand dollars. It was enough to start everything that we wanted to do. We bought land in Rwentobo—in western Uganda, just twelve miles from the Rwandan border—and set up a nursery school, World Shine Foundation School, which could support one hundred children. We put an advertisement out for orphans and needy children, not really thinking we would be oversubscribed. Almost five hundred turned up for registration. We had to find ways of making a selection, all the time cutting the numbers back. It broke our hearts. We finally selected 126 children under nine years old who were in desperate need.

The children were taught in an old building, and the next year we added another class. Then another, and another. We now have almost five hundred pupils, ranging from two- to twelve-year-olds. We have almost two hundred orphans, some of whom have lost parents to HIV/AIDS, others to malaria or other sicknesses, and others to domestic violence. The community where the school is located is predominantly Islamic, and polygamy has a hold on people. Sadly the community oppresses women, and we find that a female child is heavily disadvantaged. And yet God smiles on what we do. We have over seventy Muslim students who are happy to join us as we study in a Christian setting, using Christian materials.

We feed our students physically as well as spiritually. We offer two meals a day, which makes a significant difference in an area where malnutrition is so prevalent. Our twelve teachers also undertake outreach work with the children, finding out where they live and trying to improve conditions for them.

We work with families to help them break free from extreme poverty. We have a
send a goat
project, where supporters can pay for a goat to be given to a family in need. These little animals provide milk, kids, and much-needed meat. We are planning a
send a chicken
program as well, and no matter what you may have heard about these programs, I can assure you that when they are run as ours is—with actual goats being given to actual families—the impact of these simple projects is incredible.

We also encourage people to sponsor our students. At the moment a little fewer than half our students are sponsored, at a cost of fifteen dollars a month. That amount provides scholastic materials, two meals each day, and a uniform. Part of it goes to what we pay the teachers (who get paid eighty-five dollars a month), and our aim is to grow to provide accommodation for those children who come from violent homes, or total orphans and other children at risk. Last year one parent killed his wife in front of his child—a student of ours. We would like to build an orphanage where they could stay in the same place they learn, and where we would know that the mattress and blankets that we have given are being used by the children themselves, not by a parent who should know better.