Praying for Miracles

What a wonderful day in the Kingdom of God in the Kingdom of Eswatini.

Today our team opened the day at a primary school in the Siphofaneni area, speaking to 250+ grade 1-grade 7 students about the love of God. It was EXCITED! The kids taught up “Shake, shake banana,” and Matt delivered a wonderful word.

After a quick breakfast, the team headed out to Vovovo church, where some led women’s Bible study, while others went to a local preschool and loved on the kids there. After slathering some “Swazi specials” (also know ad peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), the team loaded up for homestead visits. We ended the day with the sweetest night of revival at the church, with a particularly rousing chorus of “Wehamba Nati.” The sweetest joy to wrap a long day of ministry. 

One visit was particularly tough today. Recently a 22 year old woman in this community at Vovovo was left paralyzed after a C-section gone wrong. She has recently returned home, unable to speak or move. We were able to visit and encourage her family today, provide a small parcel of food that will help to feed them for a few weeks, and hopefully help to take some pressure off of what I imagine has been one of the most challenging seasons of their lives. 

In full honesty, it was one of the most heartbreaking situations I’ve ever encountered in Eswatini. Senseless. Painful. Hard. Difficult to witness, difficult to swallow. 

I love the way the Swazi people pray. If you’re unfamiliar, they all pray together all at the same time. It moves me to get a glimpse at what heaven will look like (Rev. 7). Today as we knelt to the floor, and gathered around this sweet soul, so clearly broken, we prayed for miracles. We prayed with intensity for God to move. We called on the legions of heaven to come and comfort and work. We prayed that the blood of the Lamb would be spread upon their doorposts.. We prayed for a healing miracle – on this side of heaven or the next.

As believers, we don’t always get the see the miracle here. That’s hard to explain, really. It’s tough to understand the why of a situation like this. We wrestle with it, to wrap our minds around it.  We don’t understand it. It does seem senseless to us. In some ways it is. Wr don’t always get to witness the physical miracle we so deeply desire to see. 

But sometimes we do get to see THE miracle, not a physical healing, but THE miracle of death to life. At just another homestead, we watched an older man and husband accept Christ. It was sweet and all joy and beautiful, At that homestead too, we prayed for a miracle. And we got to see it. We got to get a front row seat to the Spirit moving. We’re holding those two experiences at the same time tonight. 

And at the last homestead, as we prayed for miracles once again for a woman in deep pain, we gathered and sang. 

As I turned my face to the waning western sun, I wondered if this is what Bill and Gloria Gaither hoped as they wrote “Because He Lives” so many years ago – that it would be sung hand in hand, across the world, Black and White, Swazi and American, man and woman, saying “….Because I know He holds the future, life is worth the living just because He lives.”

He lives. He lives. He lives. That is THE miracle. Death to life, grace to grace. 

We continue to pray for miracles friends – on this side of heaven or the next. Thank you Jesus for the opportunity to witness both. We love you. Amen.