Seeds Will Grow

I’m sitting here in Korea in my comfy chair with my laptop, late at night, reading updates about the war in Sudan from the Telegram channel Sudan News Network. Although I see updates buzz into my phone each day and keep my eyes out for news from places where we have family, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve opened the app to look through the updates, one by one, with proper attention.

I pause when I see a post about troops surrendering in El Obeid:

Reports that a force affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces led by Makki Mohammad Al-Tijani on the southern axis of El Obeid has announced its surrender to the Sudanese Armed Forces along with all of its equipment.

The images show profiles of several young men; two could be teenagers. They have tight curls, grown long over the course of this war. One wears prayer beads. Is the other biting his fingernails? Is he nervous? Their weapons have been laid down, and they sit together on ubiquitous plastic chairs. In the third photo, the men each hold a plate of food. They are eating together. They are no longer combatants.

These images – this story – takes me back in my memories to 16 years ago when I was living in Yei, South Sudan. It was the second time a band of feared LRA fighters were moving through our region. The LRA were a terrifying, roving rebel army from Uganda who had, in recent years, relocated themselves across the regional borders to the forests in Congo and South Sudan. They often killed entire families in front of children, before abducting the children as sex slaves and soldiers. Sometimes they forced the children to kill their family members to psychologically break them. Horror stories of their sexual violence, torturous cruelty, brutal murders, and abductions preceded them.

So, the LRA was back. The year before, a band had come through our county, killing and looting and abducting. The night after that terrible attack, we learned at a UN security briefing that the LRA soldiers had moved through the marsh behind our compound. We were spared. Several children, orphaned in the attack, had come to live with us. And in the intervening year, sixteen more teenagers who had escaped or been rescued from the LRA had come to live with us until the UNHCR was able to find out if they had living relatives with whom they could be reunited. Some had already been reunited with family; others were still living with us when we heard that the LRA was back in town.

Of course, fear is what you expect. Fear is the currency of war and violence. But, in our simple little corner of the bush, these children had heard for a year that perfect love casts out fear. For a year, they had heard and seen modeled that it was important to pray for one’s enemies. So, that night, knowing that the LRA was nearby, as we gathered for evening prayers, I was amazed to hear the children pray.

They did not pray for their own safety or escape. They did not pray for the death or destruction of the LRA. They prayed for God’s forgiveness of those soldiers. They prayed that those soldiers would know God’s love. They prayed that these armed men would give up their violence, lay down their weapons, and turn themselves in to the authorities.

As they prayed, some of the teenagers stood tall, hands outstretched with strength and dignity. Some got down on their knees and prayed through their tears. One little boy’s image is still seared in my memory – knees and elbows down in the dust – hands lifted – crying out to God at the top of his lungs – begging for the forgiveness of his enemies.

When the children finished praying, we went to sleep – and we all made it alive to the morning. We then heard on the local radio that 7 LRA soldiers had walked themselves into the center of the town, laid down their weapons, and turned themselves in at the police station.

Jesus taught things that don’t seem to make sense to an adult mind. We have been too long indoctrinated in the myth of redemptive violence and the domination system. Somehow, these children who had experienced terrible suffering and pain at the hands of militarized violence, when they heard the teachings of Jesus, they took them to heart. They trusted Jesus. They took him at his word. Their prayers were powerful and effective. Their weapons were not physical, but they were mighty to tear down strongholds – the hardest strongholds of the heart – the ones that keep humans tied up in cycles of hatred, retribution, and escalation. These children, weak in the eyes of the world and easy prey to an adult with a gun, were more powerful than the world’s systems can understand because they used the tools that Jesus taught them.

The Lord teaches us to operate not by might, nor by power, but by God’s Spirit. Would that more Christians understood what those children knew and experienced.

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