A Longing for Change

I have seen a lot in the last few weeks, or at least it feels like I have. I have witnessed sights and sensed things both new and old; been caught up in the euphoria of beautiful surroundings and the despair of the destitute.
I am back in Sudan now, but have just returned from a two week break in Thailand. Several colleagues of mine were traveling there and invited me to join in on the adventure, and since I have never been to Asia, I decided it would be a wonderful opportunity to see another part of the world. Thailand is an extremely beautiful country, covered in lush green forests that descend to the azure oceans and seas that surround its western edge. Its people are incredibly helpful and friendly, willing to point wayward tourists like myself in the right direction with big smiles on their faces.
I spent most of my week and a half there on an island called Koh Chang, relaxing on the beach, swinging from a hammock in my bungalow and eating delicious Thai food for absurdly cheap prices. It was a much needed break from the chaos that seems to grow naturally from this Sudanese soil and provided some wonderful times of reflection on the work that I am doing and why I am here.
Although my time on Koh Chang was the most memorable part of my trip, I was perhaps more deeply impacted by the day I spent walking through the streets of Bangkok. I was amazed by many of the elaborate malls I passed as I walked aimlessly around. There are huge, 5-6 story department stores offering expensive name-brand clothing and other items, and people wander in and out throwing away their money on the latest fashion. Outside the stores there are often shrines where people stop to say prayers and light candles and incense, and if you walk a few blocks away the extravagance quickly turns to more rundown shopping areas, chaotic with the number of people drifting up and down the sidewalks. What got me though, were the beggars. There weren’t an astonishing number of them, at least no more than any other city I’ve been to, but I think it was the contrast with their surroundings that got to me. They live in a country that is magnificently beautiful, in a city adorned with elaborate buildings, and they sit outside of the skytrain and on the sidewalks begging for the means to sustain their hopelessly pathetic lives. There was the old, blind man playing some sort of stringed instrument, the ragged mother breastfeeding her baby by the side of the road and the two little girls sitting alone on the walkway, waiting for someone to drop a coin in their cup. I have seen a lot of homeless people and walked past too many street children to count, but the faces I saw in Bangkok are stuck in my mind in a way I will never forget. I have never felt so helpless to do anything before in my life. I was in a strange country, in a strange city, full of strange people and I was heart broken by the people I passed on the street. And it filled me with longing; longing for change.
Back in Sudan now, the longings to do not go away; the longings for peace, for hope to fill this place, for people to be offered education and healthcare and a chance to grow old, for change to come with glorious goodness and mercy on its wings. Yesterday I attended the closing ceremony for the girls program we run when the other schools in town our out of session. It is a chance for the girls to stay active and out of trouble. We offer some basic classes as well as sports and craft activities and at the end of the program each girl receives a certificate and a small gift. As I sat there watching the girls and listening to various people make speeches all I could think of was how much change we need. These girls are already at odds to finish the schooling that is available which only goes through eighth grade. If they do make it to eighth grade, they have nowhere else to go as there isn’t a secondary school anywhere around and the schools that are being built are for students who know Arabic. I stood up and told them to dream big, to dream of being doctors and lawyers and the next leaders of Sudan and to stay in school to achieve those things. But in the end I felt like the hugest liar because without much needed change there is little hope that any of them will become those things. Sometimes this world is in such desperate times that it all but crushes our hope. And yet, there is still that longing – that longing for change to come because it is needed so badly, not just in this physical world that we know but in our hearts because after all we are the ones who come up with so much of the wickedness that consumes us.
I have seen so much in the last few weeks and it fills me with an incredible longing. Longing for change. Longing for the King to come at last and make all things new because that is what we desperately need – to be made new.


“Hear, O God, the prayers of all thy children everywhere: for forgiveness and healing, for courage, for faith; prayers for the needs of others; prayers for peace among the desperate nations. Whether thou givest or withholdest what we ask, whether thou asnwerest us in words that burn like fire or silence that burs like fire, increase in us the knowledge that thou art always more near to us than breathing, that thy will for us is love.
And deep beneath all our asking, so deep beneath that we are all but deaf to it ourselves, hear, O God, the secret song of every human heart praising thee for being what thou art, rejoicing with the morning stars that thou art God and we thy children. Make strong and wild this secret song within until it bursts forth at last to thy glory and our saving. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” ~ Frederick Buechner