Reed Mueller

As I arise this morning at around 5:15 to draft this post, I realize that I’m tired and that yesterday took its toll on me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. There were lots of reasons for this ranging from the small and insignificant to the extremely significant yet often missed.

I’m tired because we (Erin and I and the whole World Vision group) spent all day, from 6:30 or so to 11:30 or so, on the move. From our work done in preparation for the morning seminar on HIV/AIDS, to the seminar itself, to a tour of the Apartheid Museum, we kept moving!

After all of this we did something that probably isn’t helping me feel real well: ate at The Carnivore (which, while a fun experience and right up my alley, ended up being a meal I think I’m still digesting). If you haven’t guessed it, The Carnivore is an African styled restaurant where meat of all kinds is brought to you as long as you want it. The servers carry meats like beef, chicken, lamb, pork, kudu, ostrich, sable, eland, and alligator crocodile around on giant skewers, hacking off anything you want to try. Of course, we both tried them all (and I in portions too large). Once we arrived back at our hotel, already sagging in energy because of the day we’d had and the meal we were carrying around, we found a wedding reception in full swing. Imagine just wanting to go to bed so you can get some rest in preparation for another day and hearing (quite clearly, I might add) an endless mix of 80’s dance songs! Anyway, the party wound down around 11:30 and we drifted off to sleep.

These are the small and insignificant reasons why I feel tired today and are not a really big deal in the grand scheme of things (and after all, we got six hours of sleep which is plenty). So I think, upon reflection, that my fatigue is more related to my spiritual and emotional state than anything else.

As I mentioned we spent the day learning about both HIV/AIDS (in Africa and worldwide) as well as Apartheid. On the HIV/AIDS front, I was amazed by the new statistics on Swaziland and the pandemic in general. The figures just out three days ago now indicate that 42.6% of Swazi adults are HIV positive (just a few months ago as they prayed on our land with us, Thuli and Precious told us the figure was around 40%). The numbers are still considerably lower in South Africa, although still not good. In fact, just in South Africa, about 1000 die each day from AIDS (I don’t have the figures for southern Africa, only South Africa). To put that into perspective, Erin and I flew over on a plan that had 330 passengers on it. What would the world do if three such planes went down each day, every day? Yet, for so long the world (and very sadly, the church) has turned away. This just shouldn’t be.

We also learned that across sub-Saharan Africa 18% of all children will be orphans by 2010. When you add to that figure children vulnerable because of their own health status or because their parents are on the brink, that number jumps to the 36%. More than 1 in 3 youngsters here are orphaned or vulnerable children (OVC’s). I found myself asking time and time again “What can be done when there are so many in need?” It was overwhelming.

Upon concluding our seminar we ate lunch and then went directly to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. Again, what we saw was overwhelming. The museum told the story of centuries of oppression here, culminating in Apartheid, which is the Afrikaans word for “apartness”. Apartheid was the governing paradigm of the National Party that was in power in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990’s and it’s goal was to secure the social and economic security of the Afrikaners (descendents from farmer-settlers of northwestern European origen) through the creation of a poorly educated, “coloured” labor class. Various means were utilized to achieve this end.

From the moment we stepped inside the museum we got the feel for this injustice. Each person, upon entry, was randomly given a “race identification card” and could only enter through the proper portal. This split us up initially as Erin was identified as “European/White” and I was given the “Black/Coloured” card. To be so assigned assaulted my sense of right of and wrong as well as my basic desire to go through the museum with my wife. But it was effective in helping me see, even feel in a very small way, the struggle for equality that existed in this part of the world for so long.

As I indicated at the beginning of my post, I’m tired. Not so much physically, but emotionally and spiritually, and I believe this is because I feel I’ve turned my back on so many things going on in our world that just aren’t right. I was college-age in the height of the struggle against Apartheid; yet, I don’t remember caring enough about it to spend even a little mental energy exploring the issue, let alone become actively involved. This self-centeredness pains me and moistens my eyes even at this moment. I am also pained by the fact that for so long I’ve turned my back on the HIV/AIDS pandemic here in Africa (and beyond). What’s worse is that I’ve let our church ignore this as well.

I find that it’s an odd thing to be fatigued by what you never spent the energy on in the first place, but that’s where I’m at. Yet, in this fatigue I find hope: I know that I need not rest to lift my fatigue, but to become involved, following Christ. And where we follow his lead, there is always hope, always transformation, always renewal. You and I, all of us together, are on that journey, and I am so thankful that God is leading us on it.

Pray that God will continue to fatigue us – me, Erin, and our whole church. Pray that in that fatigue we will all become a church that lives for those who are lost and forgotten, no longer turning away from them through passivity or bias, but running, sacrificially, into the world that is.

In His story with you,
Pastor Reed