Some days I don’t want to write.  And those are usually days I need to write the most.

I need to write not because I have some great profundity to offer.  No great story to share.  Some days I need to write because I need to build an altar with my words, I need these lines and loops to be laid down bare to build a sacred space, a thin place where I meet with Him betwixt and between the words.

Today the air hung hot, thick, heavy like a sauna with a broken on/off switch.  Nothing deep happened.  At all.

It was a day of catching up on email and projects that still have not sent because while my morning coffee sped me up, it left the internet languishing behind.  I am dirt streaked, sweltering and alternately contemplating starting a monastery or possibly searching out a semi-deserted island with perfect internet, 5 star gourmet calorie-less food, hammocks, white sand beaches, turquoise waters and a 24 hour spa.  Both are akin to some people’s daydreams of running away to join the circus.  And they are about as likely.

Please tell me I wasn’t the only little girl out there who thought Fraulein Maria had a good thing going for her when I was growing up.  I remember half joking in high school with a friend that we should start a protestant convent.  I really was only half joking.  We’ll see which half wins.

Deep inside of me there is something that needs to build a sacred space into the fabric and rhythm of my very ordinary daily world.  And that is one reason why I write.  I don’t just write because I enjoy the practice or want to wow you with life in Africa.  I mean seriously.  Today the main excitement was killing a massive creepy crawly mystery bug on the wall.  It looked dangerous enough.  And I do not do bugs.

I write because somehow in the writing my world makes more sense.  I write because in the choosing of my words I speak order into what feels like chaos and I carve out a thin place with language and beauty to encounter Him Who is Word and Expression and Creativity itself.  It is one way I build a sacred meeting space for Him and I.  It is a way I find joy in the mundane, the muddy, messy reality of my life.

To frame my world with words somehow gives it more meaning.  To me at least.  I scribble them everywhere.  Even my art is laden with language.  Writing is worship and offering and sanity. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about why this compulsion to weave words, to build altars, to find the thin moments of the day’s edges to position my heart for encounter.

What is this craving for the sacred?  To still and slow and find the pauses, the selahs with which we can truly stop and see.  Maybe it’s just that.  Maybe it is I am blind without them.  Blind to anything that truly matters at least.

And maybe it was I am created for.  To go on walks in the cool of the day with Him who knows me the best and loves me the most.  Just maybe there is a new call to the desert places, the wild untamed sacred spaces of grace that is echoing from heaven these days.  Maybe there is a new generation of forerunners called to a counter cultural way of encounter that finds meaning in the margins and gives expression to the heart of God in a way the current system never could. Perhaps there are those who by their very choice to embrace holy longing and mystery, story and journey;  authenticity, humility and grace threaten the status quo as they live out a heart that beats with His, searching out His Presence and the poor.  Running to the low forgotten places that still know their need and are doorways for heaven.

And maybe that desire of mine to start a monastery isn’t so far fetched after all.

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So my friend, how do you weave a sacred space into the middle of a crowded day and a rushed through world?  How do you still and slow enough to truly see the things that matter most?

Might I suggest a very old monastic practice called an examen?  It is not some religious rigor or rule of navel gazing misery.  It is making time to draw away and draw in to Him so that you can be more fully present to all He is doing in the present moment all around you.

Some orders (of Ignatius) drew away twice, once at noon and then before bed to still and listen to His whisper and even their own hearts.   Their examen would include five main points: 1. Still enough to become aware of His Presence.  2.  Think back through the day with gratitude.  3.  Be aware of your own heart and emotions.  4.  Choose one happening or feature of the day and pray from there. 5. Look with Jesus toward tomorrow.

Today I walk out my door with two cameras slung over my shoulder.  Dust rises and coats my foot as I walk across the dry ground between my office and Habuba’s front porch.  {Remember Habuba?  My beautiful adoptive Grandma here.}   I sit down next to her and she laughs at me.  One camera is not enough? You work too hard for us benia (daughter).

I marvel at the grace by which I am adopted.  The very gift I came to give has been given to me and I am laid low by it every time.

I turn the lens on her and capture one of my most favorite smiles ever.  This woman has treasure in heaven so deep it makes earth’s billionaires seem devastatingly poor.   She laughs and I laugh with her.  Some days I want to take time and capture it.  Make it slow down.  I want some moments to stretch out and not end.  Hours and days are so very precious.  I realize their worth sometimes only with their passing.  My babies are becoming grade schoolers.  How is this possible?

I rise to greet the other mamas who tenderly care for our children.  Snapping pixels as I go, I might not be able slow the river down but I can bottle a few drops here and there right in my lens.  And I can stop and enjoy the moment I am in.  Not lose its value by racing through to the next one.

I come across Danieli.  He came not a few days old to live with us.  Five years ago without so much as a name.  I looked into his baby face and saw greatness.  This one is a Daniel I heard whispered from above.  Now he grins, arms stretch wide around his baby sisters.  A good big brother, he is.  I may not have carried these children in my womb, but they are inextricably woven into my heart.  I see a glimpse of the strong, fierce, loving protector and leader he will one day be.  He holds onto Patience and Peace.  As every good leader does.

Some moments I have to freeze and frame to fully see.  Some days I have to lay on the altar, carefully write them on my heart by chronicling their stories in order to really hear and comprehend.  For me this space is my canvas, my altar and writing on it, my worship.  I bring all of me to Him, here to be poured out, not to be understood but to understand.  That I may capture time in the lens of eternity.

I go in search of my sweet 11-year old photo bug, Anjiyo.  She is amazing.  Gifted, creative, sweet, kind and every ounce of her love.  I hand off the second camera she is rapidly developing an astounding mastery of. And oh yes I am very, very biased.

What moments shall we capture today daughter?  She squeals in excitement.  That we get to search them out and shoot the angles of seasons and time together… Delight envelops her face.  The journeys that are most meaningful are almost always shared ones.

I should have had the mascara on… and known I would be her favorite subject, for a moment or two at least.  She lovingly captures all of my dirt streaked, raw messiness with care.

She catches mangoes and moments in her lens all hanging together.  Time itself wavers, stops as she clicks.  For a split second when I load her images on my computer tonight I am looking at her world through her eyes.  I see what she sees.  And speech is struck right out of me because of the beauty she frames and offers back as a gift that we too might see. 

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. 

Maybe the pure in heart might even capture a glimmer of the One they see through their lens.  I ponder the possibility.  Because I am quite certain today she did.   She didn’t just catch time, she caught a glimpse of eternity.

"This is Love" by Anjiyo. Look how far Mercy has come. Thank you for your prayers! Later this year my art studio, Talking Walls, will be hosting Anjiyo's very first photo essay, entitled "My Life". Her world through her eyes. And oh that we would all see so clearly His beauty around us, the forever found hidden right in the middle of now.

This morning dawns with steam telling of a day where “hot” will be an understatement.  I rise toes to the floor, my mattress already drenched.  Before 8 am.  Drenched.  Eye lids sagging from a short night. I turn my alarm off twice but time has the audacity to not pause with my snooze button.

Early meetings give way to the plumber coming to investigate the greenish water coming from my water tank.  I watch as he scrunches up his face in disgust.  No it is not algae. It is a dead bird.  I have been washing my hair in water with decaying bird in it.  I grimace at that image and swallow down the taste of bile in my throat.  Some days I wish I were entirely less visual.  It feels like someone threw a well aimed ball right at me.

Then comes news of more money I did know I would be giving out.  Everything inside screams.  This is not in my budget! The room spins and I hold on to furniture to keep from spinning with it.  Another ball hard and fast, this one curved from out of my line of vision.

The news comes of Invisible Children’s leader and his very public breakdown.  My heart breaks for him and all that is so broken in this world, even in me.  This is a day my weakness is all too near.  And graciously, quietly so is His strength. 

Afternoon comes.  Hotter with each minute and me choosing to not wilt in the pressure of deadlines and projects and more meetings.  I arrive back home and break open the last bit of cereal I had been saving for just such a day, careful to not wash my hands under the tap of still decaying water. {The plumber comes tomorrow. We think.}  I open my last container of long life milk and pour it over the honey nut clusters carried so carefully from America.  I sit down sweltering and absently dig in, enjoying each bite. Halfway through I notice my cereal bowl is wriggling.

Slam.  Another ball from another direction.  My day is beginning to feel reminiscent of an elementary playground nightmare called dodge ball.

Honestly.  I fight back an irrational gale that rips at my eyelids. Really. I just ate half a bowl of wormy cereal and there’s a dead bird in my tank and never mind the expenditures I did not expect and everything screams, stop the world I want a fifteen minute break…  Can you relate at all?

I fight the storm building within.  I fight the bluster and I set my mind to remember.  There is a world of difference between a game of dodge ball and a game of catch.  My choices in the middle of balls flying set the rules for which game I am playing.

What life throws my way:  I can dodge and survive.  Or I can catch, capture the moment, beautiful, horrific and throw each one back in praise.  Worship right in the middle of the storm of daily life.  I know this deep down but some days what I know gets a bit mud-covered and obscured by what I see flying around me.  It is then I realize, today I have forgotten to catch and started to duck.

I pause.  Thank You Jesus for the gift of plumbers who know how to disinfect water tanks.  Thank You that You give living water and not water contaminated with disease and decay. 

Thank You Papa that You are good and You provide for the unexpected and even the forgotten and the things not in my budget are still in Yours.  Thank You for stilling rooms that spin and my stomach with them.

Thank You Holy Spirit You never leave and You always are there. 

I too need reminding.  I step out of my gate into the waning evening light.  Silhouettes of my children dip and spin as they toss a sock made ball back and forth.  It is a dance of gratitude, the poetry of release.

I am reminded that the only solution to days such as these is radical gratitude.  When life invites me to play ball, I can choose the game I play.  I can stop ducking.  Stand tall and ready, catch the moment leaning into grace and throw it back to the only One who knows what to do with the circumstances of my hours and my heart with them, embracing a posture of praise.

So yes God, about my dinner tonight, well…thank You for that extra side of protein.

On this day my dear friends, I leave you with a photo taken on a recent wander through the Welsh hill country and one of my favorite Irish blessings.

“May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

Over five years ago now this photo was one of the first pictures I took surrounded by the bamboo fence lines, grass thatched roofs and dusty paths of my new home.  It became for me both metaphor and mandate.  No child ever on the outside looking in, longing for a home.  Every baby with a bed and someone to love them to life and into their destinies.  This picture still calls to me in a way facts and statistics cannot. There are still so many who are peering in the fence lines longing to be welcomed into a family.

The Word made flesh came and walked gritty earth so I could be His.  So I could walk with Him a world away and watch Love transform the deepest places of brokenness.  It has been quite the journey.  So many of you have walked with us in your prayers and your love and your kindness spilled out from places all around the globe.  I am so very grateful for all of you.  So very grateful.

The mid-afternoon sun bakes the top of my head as I walk with camera slung like a satchel over my shoulder.  I am making my rounds and doing one of my favorite things, capturing moments to remember, to carry, to share.

She walks back with me to the small interior fence around my office.  It is meant to keep goats out of the vegetable garden but it doesn’t keep them or anything else out.  Hence we’ve given up on the vegetables.  She pokes her chubby little almost four year old face through the bamboo and I turn and trap time in pixels and gasp.  Her ear to ear smile lights up and I fight back that which wells up from deep within. I remember the day she came all bundled, her life dependent on our yes.  How I held her close and watched her grow and battled to see her take her first steps and to shake off the infirmity that tried to take her from us.

And SHE reminds me.  No more outside looking in.  Five years and all these little lives.  They are on the inside looking out.  Out into dreams and destinies and hopes and futures.

I am overwhelmed with how very good God is, how utterly humbled I am to be entrusted with such gifts.  And how I too am now on the inside of a loving family where my older children tell me one day they will take care of me when I am old.  I never expected in one of the most economically ravaged places on earth to become rich in everything that matters.

As we step off into a weekend, I wanted to pause and thank Him again for you and all the miles you have journeyed with us that no child might ever have to be left outside the fence alone. I think of the miles ahead and tuck all my questions away and leave them with the Only One Who knows the hours, the days or the answers I seek for them.

Let me offer a thought from by far and away one of my most favorite authors, Ann Voskamp.  I had a chance to meet her ever so briefly in passing last fall.  A split second encounter that somehow caught eternity in a quiet handshake and enveloping glance.  This one only writes what she lives.  And she lives grace and joy and gratefulness and most of all, she clings to Him.

Someone asked her about her future plans for writing projects and the like.  Seeing as her first book, One Thousand Gifts, has been months on the New York Times bestseller list…  This was her response.  May it also be mine.

“Sometimes instead of considering what is next, I have to simply consider what is—and He is and He is always enough.” -Ann Voskamp

There are days when I just plain need rescuing.

Tonight the wind blows slightly cooler and high towers of purple storm clouds roll in from the distant horizon.  It has been an ordinary day of too much to do before lunch and it being too hot afterwards to do much at all.

I step outside to do my evening round of greetings and hugs.  Walking across to our neighborhood of white children’s houses with aqua trim a stone’s throw from my gate, I am greeted by an all out melee. I turn to see what the excitement is about just in time to watch a small feathered projectile fly headlong into the side of the nearest house.  My own brood rushes to gather its stunned little body and bring the spoils of their find to me.

Miniature nearsighted kamakazi finches had been flying into the walls. I don’t know what is a worse fate.  To hit a cement wall full bore or to be “rescued” by some of my children who are still learning kindness to animals is a virtue worth pursuing.  Some of my older daughters take my cue and stop the younger ones from having their way, the bewildered birds twice rescued.

I motion my elated flock over and rescue one of their finds, cupping it gentle in my hand.  Totally free to fly, but held safely until she had mustered the strength to try again. Some days when I hit the wall, I just need to be cupped gentle until I recover.

For ten minutes, maybe more, she sits motionless in my hand as one by one carefully monitored little fingers stroke her head, soft and kind.  How far simple kindness can go when you have crash landed after your best efforts.  Sometimes it is not the super spiritual we need most.  Sometimes we just need someone to offer to hold our fragile state with gentleness, speak softly and offer a cup of tea along with a listening ear.  I am so grateful for the friends in my life who handle my fragile days with care… and my bad hair days with grace, ruffled feathers all included therein.

My new companion just rests in my palm, even as I can just rest safely in His, leaning hard against where my very name is etched in love.  Suddenly she turns, springs forth, spreading her wings and soars without hesitation smack into another wall.  Hard she falls stunned to the ground.  I walk over, pick her up again and in a moment she finally flies far away from such dangerous places that have audacious walls and curious children.

I know that that feels like.  To miss the wall and fly straight into it.  Be rescued.  Draw up the courage to try again only to fly into another one.

But there is such good news when we miss the obvious and hit the wall, on the days we need rescuing even from ourselves, the times we are fragile and vulnerable and need to be cupped with care.  HE is there waiting.  Not a sparrow or a nearsighted finch or one of us falls to the ground without Him there ready, watching, tender, kind.  It is this love, this grace that teaches us how to truly fly free.

Today over this way the winds are blowing fierce.  They let us know the seasons are blowing and changing with them.  Dust storms herald the coming rains. And in the middle of the swirl I stop and remember.  How to till ground and what I learned when I was among the Dinka tribe last year.  Tall and fierce, warm and welcoming all at once, these beautiful people have weathered many winds and storms.  Today I paused to paint and pray and remember.

Last year we drive non-existent roads through the back country of Dinka land.  The largest round mud house always reserved to guard their wealth in cattle.  I watch little boys and their papas, weathered mamas and young girls all bend low to the grainy land, loam and sand mixed well through.  The grass does not grow tall and fierce like where I live in Yei.  Wide open lands stretches long to meet the sky here.

These tall, regal, warrior people bend low and till the ground on their knees.  Somehow I am in awe of that. One generation teaches another the way to plant a harvest is low on their knees.

They plant seed with a spear tip and dig deep kneeling on the ground.  And their land yields its harvest.  Isn’t the battle in us always over His seed?  Maybe we should plant with spear tips too? Maybe we should turn our fighting weapons into tools of making ground ready to receive something that lasts beyond ourselves.

How else is a harvest sown but low and deep one seed at a time?  I must learn a path lower still.  How else to plant a harvest but by bending low?  How else to see heaven touch earth but by my placing dusty knees to the ground and planting whispered prayers hidden in the unseen depths of sand and loam and clay?  Earth tilling earth that heaven might bring forth eternal fruit in me and around me.

And at home my little ones bow low on our soil, faces to the grey brown dirt every evening planting their seeds for harvests to come.  I stand in awe of Him and them all that finds strength and grace in the bending, in the bowing, in the breaking.

We stand the tallest when we bend the lowest.

Here I am with my beautiful friend and adopted Sudanese grandma on our base in South Sudan.  Isn’t she gorgeous?  We love her and all our amazing staff family deeply.  They are true heroes.  Just popping in at the end of a very busy week to say, you are loved. Almost 10,000 hits in two days have pretty much left me sockless and speechless.  Thank you.  Let’s keep loving and sharing and encouraging all the way through April 20th and then Cover the Night with prayer and advocacy of a non-violent intervention.

In the effort to help get the word out about the implications of Kony 2012 in a way an audience who may or may not have Jesus as their center might engage with, I released today an open letter to the media.  You can read it on my other personal blog, Sowing Hope, where I periodically write to a broader audience {who are at all different places on their faith journeys, but then aren’t we all?} about transformational practices and ideas to change the world that are simple, solid and sustainable in nature.

I’d love to see you there.  But from here wonderful friends, please enjoy this weekend knowing above all: YOU. ARE. LOVED.

{and what you can do to help}

Wow these last 24 hours have been a whirlwind over here.  So many of you have clicked and read and shared  the last post, and prayed too.  I am so humbled by that.  Please keep sharing, keep clicking, keep praying, keep wrestling with what love looks like when it is most costly.

I want to share a little bit more with you as we pick our way on this unpaved road we travel.  May I?

This picture above is of my favorite captures ever.  It is of a little girl whose world was torn to shreds, who came to us barely alive on the heels of an LRA attack almost in our backyard. {If you haven’t already, you can read about it here.}  A few months later she was running down our trails, leaping off of fallen tree trunks and flying into my arms.  She has been teaching all of us about what it means to live truly free.

She, and many of our other children, show us there is nothing any of us has walked through in our lives, that He has not already paid the price on the cross to heal.  His love never fails.

But the story does not even end with her healing and restoration, as miraculous as it was.  When God moves, He is building a living history that changes the way we see and interact with the world around us.  His past faithfulness becomes a platform for our present faith.

Six months later after the initial attack near our compound, the LRA again returned less than ten miles from us.  Unbeknownst to me, our children had decided enough was enough.  They began to call early morning meetings in their houses.  Getting up at 5 am, they worshiped and prayed, pouring their hearts out in prayer.

They were tired of violence in their backyard. But they also knew the real enemy would never be defeated by physical force or firepower.  Their prayers were not ones of vengeance and retribution.  They cried out for three things primarily.

1. That the LRA in the area would walk into to local police stations and turn themselves in.  That they would tire of killing and want to stop.
2. That the police would be merciful to them and help them.
3. That the surrendered rebels would be restored and reunited with their families and come to know the love of God.

Again eight, nine and ten year olds storming the gates of heaven that the captives in their midst might be set free. Little children leading the way and humbling us all with their examples. They embodied a forgiveness so profound, so supernatural I have no doubt heaven itself silenced to lean low and listen to their cries.

Why do I believe that?

Three days later, a group of ten LRA members walked into our local police station of their own accord and turned themselves in. From the accounts we heard, they basically said, “We are tired of killing people and stealing, can you help us?”  This does not happen.  Not at all.  But in the kingdom of God, the prayers of one small child are enough to stop one of the most feared rebel movements on the planet.

What might He do in response to 50 million people pausing their clicking for prayer?

Where armies of the earth had failed, the prayers of children who know they are sons and daughters of their Papa in heaven were moving mountains!  Our children were not crying out for destruction but for mercy on their enemies.  How heaven must have marveled.  I know we adults did.

Over the next six weeks, our children prayed each morning.  Forty-seven more LRA rebels turned themselves into area police headquarters all around us.  And just as our children prayed, many were able to be reunited with their families and repatriated back to their communities.

I am reminded every day here, it takes no great love to love those who love you.  BUT what GREAT love it takes to love and pray for an enemy that has raped and pillaged and stolen everything from you.  Some of our children were praying, not for an impersonal threat, but for the very enemy that had ripped apart their homes and lives.

I am reminded that if we are going to live truly free, we must embrace radical forgiveness as both a hard choice and a beautiful grace.

Our children show us time and again that the unfailing love of God is strong enough to look hate in the face and choose mercy, that it is powerful enough to cause rebel armies to bow their knees, that it is big enough even to stop a war in its tracks.

I read about a precious man I have never met last night.  He is a church leader in the area of northern Uganda that was ravaged by the LRA before they were chased out of Uganda and into South Sudan, DR Congo and Central African Republic six year ago.  (That’s right: they are not active in Uganda at present.)  He has lost loved ones, was captured and experienced the horrors of this rebel group first hand.  These are his words.  I can only pray we listen.

You cannot heal a land filled with violence with more violence. That may seem like a quick solution, but in the end it only brings more pain and revenge. We need to look to Christ’s true example of reconciliation in order to learn how to heal this land. Forgiveness must exist in the darkness in order to bring about Truth and Light. -Father Martin from Northern Uganda

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WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP:

• Read more on the implications of the #Kony2012 campaign for us here on the border of DR Congo in South Sudan and some thoughts on what it means to love our enemies.
• Consider a very balanced critical analysis of the broader issues surrounding the #kony2012 movement.
• Retweet, repost and pass these posts along if they resonate.
• Read and learn more about alternative interventions of restorative justice, as well as the differences between propaganda and advocacy/awareness raising.  Truly I am not making any assertions here, but dig a little and make your own mind up on where this falls on the spectrum and whether it is helpful or not.  The lines are often very fine. I just find it an interesting thing to ponder.
• Partner with local indigenous organizations enacting positive change on the ground like the ones listed in the second article or other ones you can build an ongoing relationship with.
• For churches or Christian groups considering hosting a Cover the Night event associated with Kony2012, consider perhaps hosting a targeted prayer event instead for the restoration of the nations and peoples ravaged in this conflict.  Cover the night, but cover it with prayer and awareness of God’s heart that makes Him famous not the works of the enemy.  Contact me if you would like more information on how you might do that.
• Write to your lawmakers and policy makers and express any concerns you might have.  In terms of the USA, I once was told on capitol hill that “All politics are local.”  In other words legislators and decision makers weigh constituents who voice their concerns as speaking for more than just themselves.  If you are concerned enough to speak up and write, there are likely a whole number of folks who are concerned and have remained silent.  Your voice matters.
• Come visit Uganda/South Sudan, build relationships with people on the ground and see the situation for yourself.

I wake this morning to what could be a perfect social media storm forming just to our south.  You can see the cloud bank growing and the winds beginning to swirl through the twitter, facebook and youtube communities.  Tweets, clicks, posts all calling the world to find Kony, and preferably dead is the sentiment of many.  At all costs, stop at nothing to stop this feared leader of one of the most violent rebel groups in history.

Cartoonish caricatures vilify this one very human man even further.  Yes he and those he leads personify inhumanity in their actions, but they too, even as they are overtaken by darkness, are still flesh and blood.  We fight not against flesh and blood.  Suddenly this one man has become the poster child for all that we see as evil, exploitative and wrong in the world. Maybe even rightly so in some regards, if we were picking poster children.  But the hate ridden, somewhat insensitive slogans cropping up in profile pictures and on internet sites around the world.  Are these truly helpful?  Or is this perhaps well meaning social activism gone awry?

We live here with over 100 children less than 50 miles from Kony’s currently alleged stomping grounds in DR Congo.  We have had the LRA (Kony’s rebel army) active less than a mile away from where I am sitting writing to you.  Go a mile into the landscape you see in backdrop of this picture above and you too can set foot on the place one of my little girls lost her entire family right in front of her, brutally massacred by other former children who grew up surviving the only way they could in a heinous situation. Now these child victims have grown up to become the villains in a cycle of violence and terror.  But they were once victims too.  We must not forget that.

We live face to face with our enemies every day.  Our little ones often pray kneeling down in the dirt for the healing, the rescue, the restoration of the very ones who ripped their worlds apart.  Little eight, nine and ten year olds, and older teenagers making the hard, costly choice to forgive again and again and again.

We choose moment by moment to walk a different way.  We walk in the steps of Him who tells us, love our enemies. And what does loving our enemies really look like?  What does it mean to love the ones who have maimed, captured, raped, tied to trees, burned alive, beaten and shredded the worlds of those we love so dearly?

Is hopping on a social media campaign that will likely in the end result in advocating more violence in our backyard love?  Or even wisdom? Hardly.

I would like to be generous enough to give the folks who are spearheading this campaign the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps they don’t fully realize the repercussions of introducing more violence (even though they say they don’t want violent means used, it is pretty hard to imagine the end result being achieved without it) into a region soaked in blood already. Or maybe they really think it will be of benefit. Either way I am not judging them.  I just have some concerns.

Here are some personal thoughts to consider from someone who may have the people she loves very dearly caught in the middle of this campaigns unintended consequences on the field:

1. Vilifying, dehumanizing even the most vile of our enemies, over simplifying complex international issues into a social media frenzy that in the end result of things may actually promote more violence is not the answer.
2. In a region plagued by violence, more violence is never the answer. What you sow, you reap.
3. What happened to loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us? Those of us who have chosen to walk in the Way of Jesus need to model His heart when it counts most. 
4. This is, in my view, a perfect social media storm in the making that in all likelihood will do more damage than good to the very people it purports to help.

Do we want Kony caught? You have to ask? Of course we do. We want him stopped from harming more people, but we in no way wish his annihilation. Vengeance only births more of the same in our own hearts and everyone looses.

Our children are choosing in the middle of their loss and pain to walk in the radical forgiveness without which true healing is not possible.  How can we not do likewise?

Please maybe give a few minutes to consider this before you retweet and share #kony2012. And read just one story of what God did back in 2009 when the LRA came into our backyard.

With love from this unpaved road, Michele

-PS If you are clicking over here from twitter, I in no way mean this to be offensive for those believing in what they are doing.  All this is, is one very imperfect woman’s personal concerns and musings from her faith journey.  It is not reflective of or representative of any official position from any organization with which I am affiliated.