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Sunday, January 20, 2013

A Prayer For Ghana (and for me)

God, I have my heart set on Africa – on Ghana. Anticipating a trip to Ghana is a call to faith and to trust. It forces me to think about how you must consider this place.

How do you see nations? How do you understand us?Where does your allegiance rest? You do not pledge  allegiance to flags of nations and you do not sing their anthems. You are not allied with political parties and you do not vote. Do you see the lines we draw?

I ask your compassion on Ghana. Rain down your generosity, your redemption, and your love on this place. Highlight its beauties and expand them to all Ghanaians. Loosen the grip of poverty and make slavery  history.

I take you with me. I desire to take the love of God to Ghana, to children whose lives have been wounded in a system of poverty, slavery, and abuse. I want to share your love with them.

I seek you there. To assume that you are not already present in Ghana would be to think so very little of you. I go to Ghana to find you as well. There must be a side or many sides to you that are revealed in Ghana that are not or cannot be witnessed where I am sheltered in my privilege and culture.

I go to witness poverty. I want to see with my own eyes how the evil of poverty crushes souls. But I do this not to feel good about my own comforts, though I am sure I will. I want you to reveal the poverty in my own soul. Expose my poverty and deepen my soul.

God, I have been asked to go to Ghana because I have a skill that is needed there. But God, I need Ghana as much as it needs me. I do not want to be the same man when I return.

I lift up these thoughts, desires, and request in the name of the one whose story ends in the redemption of all things.

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