An added reality

At times I’m smug and confident and I crank out work like nobody’s business. The purchase order list is long and has a lot of intricacies but I’ve organized it on an everchanging excel sheet with multiple tabs. The list of students that need to be added to the orientation course is huge but I quickly pick out the ones that have incorrectly put their emails. I’ve quickly turned the paper and pen, course attendance sheet into an electronic google forms sign-in.

I catch mistakes quickly these days because I’ve had years of mistake making under the gracious eye of Gloria Metz, my longest most kind and doting supervisor, at Bethel Seminary. I thank God I can look somewhat competent and I don’t have to struggle so much to get all the things right. Zip Zip and that work is done.

But there is one space where I struggle in ways many Ugandans don’t. The magical mystical world of the spirit. I often see my colleagues faithfully coming from prayer meeting which they keep religiously. They have stacks upon stacks of work to do but they go to prayer because their lives would be an unmanageable wreck if they didn’t. And even as they pray, at times they cannot manage the horrors they face. They see the spirit realm in ways I am absent minded about.

I had an educated lady at the university tell me about the prayers she has prayed with one of her congregants. She herself was both a pastor and an administrator at the women and children’s hospital as well as an educated medical professional. She had a parishioner who continually lost all her born and gestating sons to premature death. Since they both knew the animistic cultural traditions, they banded together and prayed over the situation and a boy child was born to push back and gain victory over the dark intentions of the family. She held in balance the realm of the spirit with the degrees she had framed upon the wall.

Some colleagues pray for success in business and employment. They identify the chaos some fellow workers attempt to create for co-workers, intentionally, in a swift sinister move to make themselves look more accomplished or to snatch away a coveted job.

Prayer takes time. It took time for God to speak and the void became light and darkness. Morning and evening came into being. Time and all the trappings of physical existence erupted into being. The spoken words of God propelled into existence the time/space we occupy. This was the work of the Lord, throughout 6 days.

1 Corinthians 3:9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. …where Christ is the foundation.

It seems our work on earth mimics the work of God in creation. We with our prayers speak into existence the order and the structures that surround us. In a space where the creator and the created unite efforts to further the good of all creatures and creation.

Yet some times as I am moving about with my task list and purchase order list. I have my twice edited newsletter in my draft folder. And somehow all of it becomes a confused mess. The PO becomes a large sum funneled into my personal bank account and as I go to sort it out, at the finance office the finance manager’s eyes get really big as I describe the mess. My employee has disregarded my task list to her and the gardener has decided to uproot all the carrots and flowers I have planted. Even the words on my newsletter have become mangled and undisciplined in ways that don’t make sense to me either, but only I could have been responsible for their chaos. It is then, I remember that instead of quieting my mind and instead of speaking into the darkness, I woke up early and began tapping away at the computer.

Tomorrow, I will wake up early and speak into the darkness first.