The Joy I Found in Africa

~ and Long to Share with You

by Emily Theresa

I find myself on the carpet, yet again, bowed low, empty. I’m sobbing, Lord, please come and fill me with your joy. And then I remember. I remember to worship. I remember to praise. So, slowly, falteringly, I lift up my eyes and my hands. I raise my hands and I begin to sing to Jesus. And the sorrow flees.

It’s a practice I’ve learned over the past 10 years in running a non-profit. It’s a practice I’ve learned witnessing the kind of persistent praise that causes demons to flee from villages across Africa and Asia. 

It’s a joy that stains one’s skin red like the sub-Saharan dirt. A stain that reminds us that sometimes joy can look like suffering. 

The Emptiness of the North American Church

As a child, joy tasted like mango juice dripping down my chin. I was a missionary kid in the Congo and Nigeria, and joy was something palpable in Africa, something colorful and loud and vibrant, like the dresses the women wore to the market or the flash of a bird’s wings in the lush green of jungle.

Then when we returned home to Canada, I became a pastor’s kid. I swung my leotard legs on the church pew while my dad delivered his sermons. I witnessed drawn-out faces and pale praise, and longed for the colors, the sounds, the smells of Africa. I’d lived there long enough to know there was something powerful about Jesus’ joy – something mysterious and lavish. It seemed to thrive in the most barren of places. It resounded in the open rafters of a village church through the whooping hallelujah of a wizened jajja. 

But all I tasted now was the stale bread and watery juice of Sunday Communion.

I might have caught a glimpse of it at our basement potlucks after church where the women laughed as they unwrapped the cellophane sandwiches and the men and women sang grace. 

But mostly it seemed church was a dry, orderly affair where the only joy felt was when the sermon was over and people could escape home to their couches.

The Joy in Suffering

Death crushed me as a kid. I lost a close friend when I was young and stopped eating for four years. It was in this emptying that God filled me. He came to me at 13 years old in a hospital bed. Nurses said I was a miracle, that I should have died, and God met me, there. He told me He was life and life abundant. He gave me the courage to pick up my fork and begin to eat again. 

When I returned to Africa on a blogger’s trip in 2014, I witnessed a similar kind of emptiness and filling. 

I witnessed it in Rwanda, in a widow telling her story of genocide. She’d also been emptied by death. Her husband and sons, murdered, and her daughters, gone mad. At the end of her story of loss, though, she lifted her hands and said, “God is good.” 

Then she repeated herself because it was hard to hear the first time. “God is good.”

Hers was a joy fixed before her, which took the shape of a very real and very present Jesus. He had stepped into her emptiness and filled her with Himself.

The Laughter of the Poor in Spirit

For a while I thought I could only find that kind of joy in Africa, but then my Mum got sick with brain cancer.  I moved home to take care of her, and I found joy there, too.  

I would tuck Mum’s napkin into her shirt and feed her Habitant pea soup and together we would watch the birds dip and glide. And after lunch, Mum would stand up, napkin still tucked, and begin to rock back and forth to the worship music on the stereo. She would lift her hands and sing off-key, eyes closed, even as a tumor ravaged her brain.

Years later I began leading Bible study once a week for drug addicts, recovering alcoholics, and the homeless. They knew a kind of repentance I’d only given lip service to. Each week they welcomed me, shared their lunch with me, and told me their stories. They gathered around like the hungry when it was time for the gospel and when we sang, tears streamed down their faces.

And one of them, a young man who battled drugs, who’d been beaten by his pastor-father, whose sister had overdosed and was found in a snowbank, told me he longed to laugh again. We prayed together and that weekend, he began to read the gospel of John. As he read, the Spirit of Joy filled him and he laughed for four hours straight.

The Joy Jesus Offers 

Friends, there’s a joy available in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a joy that will never be taken from us. It leaps from the pages of Scripture and fills us with Living Wine. It’s a holy Communion with the Spirit, a table set for us by the One who defeated death.

And it’s free for the poor in spirit. For all who serve through The Lulu Tree, for all of you who so faithfully hold the ropes.

May you find the strength today to praise. Faltering praise, perhaps, but even as you whisper the songs, your lungs will be filled with a holy fire, with the presence of Christ Himself, and soon God’s holy laughter will resound through you to all the world. 

Hallelujah. 

Praying the Word for Joy

(by Lulu Secretary Jeanne Damoff)

Gracious Father, thank You for the example Jesus set for us – that for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, and now He is seated at Your right hand. Because of His victory, we taste that same joy even as we endure the brokenness of this world. We pray for the grace to know You are good in the face of all the suffering, pain, and evil that touches us and those we love. Even in the midst of tribulation, You told us to be of good cheer, because You have overcome the world. Nothing can separate us from Your love.

Lord, we ask for an outpouring of joy on the Lulu Tree’s friends and partners around the globe. Fill us with Your Spirit, and may the fruit of joy not only feed our own souls, may it set an abundant table for many who’ve never tasted the goodness of God. Like the woman in Rwanda who lost everything but You, let our confession of faith and sacrifice of praise release a flood of light and life into dark and aching places, and may those who hear come and join the feast. In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

P.S. Friends, we would love to pray for you – through whatever valley you might be walking. Send us a message at info@thelulutree.com so we can hold up your hands as you whisper the brave song.

(This post was inspired by Emily’s new memoir, God Who Became Bread. All proceeds benefit The Lulu Tree)