Author: Jon

A Jon Post

Luis, father of 4 sits in my back yard reading a paperback New Testament. My children laugh, play, fight and scream nearby, all at once asking for independence and constant attention. My wife stands in the kitchen preparing a meal for our hungry children and her goofy, bearded husband. I’m sitting with my back against Casa Ahavá’s wall next to Luis, watching my daughters bounce from dog to toy to treehouse to slide to ground.

Smile

“What have you been reading in there, Luis?” I ask, trying to be as respectful as possible.

And a conversation centered around a scripture in the Epistle of First John begins.

The afternoon draws on, the mosquitos come out, the dusk draws the curtains of sunlight down and my kids have been called into the kitchen where my wife has finished dinner prep. God’s gift of abundant grace enables her to recognize the import and urgency of the moment and she selflessly gathers all four children to the dinner table, leaving Luis and me to watch the sun’s droopy eyes close over another day as we talk about the right to be called God’s children, not just His creation.

“What do you think it takes to be called God’s son, Luis?” I ask.

“I don’t know, Jon.”

So we talk more, the sun finally falls asleep and the stars wake up and still we talk.

Then a whispered prayer, an urgent voice, and a resounding chorus of angels rejoice as Luis and I look at each other. “You have the right to be called a son of God now, Luis.”

“Yes, brother Jon.” He replies, “Yes, I am God’s son now.”

Luis had a tumor pressing on his esophagus at the beginning of the year. He noticed the discomfort, went to a provincial hospital, had an x-ray, and a surgeon scheduled him for a surgery that was never explained to him nor was he asked if he’d like to proceed. He trusted the fledgling health system here in Mozambique and went under the knife.

4 months later I found myself sitting with the head oncologist who looked at Luis’ patient history and a current x-ray of his esophagus. The tumor, barely touched in the surgery, had grown and closed a badly mangled esophagus that had been stretched to (needlessly) bypass his stomach. In every sense of the phrase except literal, Luis had been butchered.

“This cannot be fixed, Jon”, said the oncologist. “We can only give so many chemotherapy treatments, but we can’t fix this.” He gestured in futility at the patient file on his desk.

Some weeks later, Luis and I talked about his prognosis. We used some awful words;

Terminal

Palliative

Cancer

Death

And we used some wonderful ones;

Care

Family

Hope

God

Life

Now Luis lives with a tube inserted into his upper intestine where he injects liquefied food with a large syringe in order to stay alive. He cannot swallow, he cannot go anywhere without a small tupperware container to put his saliva in, he never tastes food.

And I’ve never seen him go for 10 minutes without smiling.

You… Yes you, supporter/prayer-partner/curious reader… You would be so proud to see the way Luis cares for his roommate who is blind in one eye and in consistent pain. He cooks for him, cleans the room alone, holds his hand to walk him across a dangerous road, gently and graciously teaches him the game of checkers, and never once complains about his own pain or discomfort.

You… yes YOU, reading this right now… If you consider yourself a child of God… you can be extremely proud of your brother, Luis. He will probably make it home to his Father before you do, and you will probably not meet him until you get there too…

But be proud of your brother, Luis.

Sons of God

A Jon Post

We’d just gone to the beach… just spent a day together as a family laughing and dipping our toes into the cool waters of the Indian Ocean as it lapped gently against Maputo’s shoreline… just driven through Maputo’s “downtown” area, smiling and marveling at the engineering and architecture that went into creating the bustling city.

Monday was a good day.

That night Maria walked into our kitchen.

“Can I come in?” She called.

“Don’t ask me that!” I joked over my shoulder from the stove, “Just come in! It’s your house! You can’t ask if you’re allowed into your own kitchen!”

“I just received a phone call.” She told me.

I could hear the concern in her voice…. hear the pain behind the unspoken words left off the end of that sentence. I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. I could see the tears brimming in her eyes, the sorrow disfiguring her face like a hurricane ripping through a city.

“My husband was walking home from work and was hit by a car.”

I held my tongue. My American tendency to draw out all relevant information with a flurry of questions stilled and I held her hand and waited for her to continue at her own pace.

“He didn’t come home last night and my brother found him in the hospital this afternoon.”

A small relief. He is still alive.

“He wants to talk to you.”

I looked at her outstretched arm and the phone nestled in her quivering hand. The Southern African reliance on community in tragedy is a weighty thing. When there is bad news to be shared, often times it is shared around those most profoundly affected, especially when the news is shared over the phone. This is a good practice when emotional and spiritual support is vital. It was humbling and honoring to be asked to be a part of this for Maria, so recently a member of Casa Ahavá.
I accepted the phone and held a brief conversation with Maria’s older brother. Her husband is alive and conscious, but is in critical condition after being hit by a car from behind and sustaining deep road burns on his face and arms. His back and is in a lot of pain and the doctor suspects a cracked pelvis.

I looked at Maria. She sat on our kitchen bench looking at me, waiting to hear what I had to say. I assured her brother on the phone that I would get Maria to her children and husband as quickly as possible and we ended the call.

Layne had heard the commotion and we all sat together in our little kitchen. I explained to Maria what her brother had shared with me about her husband and assured her that, from the sounds of it, her husband should recover.

And we prayed. All of us held hands and I sat on my tile floor and we prayed. Maria on my couch, battling leukemia 1200 kilometers from her children whose daddy lay in a hospital bed in pain.

We pray still.

This Friday, Maria will have another consult with her doctor and, as long as her body is responding well to her latest medication, we will put her on a bus that night and send her to her suffering family.

I saw a movie last night that detailed part of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At one point in the movie Dr. King looks at a grieving parent, lost in the throes of agony. “There are no words” Dr. King says through tears to this weeping parent. “But one thing I do know for certain,” he said,

“God was the first to cry”

God was the first to cry for Maria when her body betrayed her to leukemia.

God was the first to cry when her husband lay on a dark road, covered in blood and dirt.

And God was the first to cry when Maria’s children spent the night alone, both father and mother in need of Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who Heals.

So we cry with our Lord.

Maria

Our Lord who comforts His beloved. Our Lord who speaks tenderly to His dove who hides in desert and mountainside.