Heat Wave

Our new house is affectionately termed the hot house. 

Maybe it’s because of the concrete roof that basically bakes our house like an oven during the day. Maybe it’s the small courtyard and the close wall that blocks the breeze from passing through. Or maybe it’s just a normal west African hot season in April, but that house is hot. 

We try to keep all the doors and windows open to keep air circulating, but even our fans seems to just blow hot air like a blow dryer. The other night, I actually could not take a shower because the water scalded my skin. Most people run the shower water to let it warm up; we run ours to let it cool down. Even after getting out of the shower, in less than two minutes you are wondering if what’s dripping from your brow is water or sweat. Touch the walls at night, and they radiate heat. Our wax candle melted on top without even lighting it. Even our water filter is hot to the touch, like there is heated water inside. 

The other morning Megan went to make pour-over coffee, and went she went to get water out of the filter, she said, “Do I even need to heat this water?”

At first I was bummed that we didn’t have a microwave, but then I realized that we don’t need one. Anything you want warmed up, just set it on the kitchen counter where the sun comes in, and within ten minutes, voila! A ready to eat meal.

We had some friends over for a housewarming the other night, and I think everyone noticed how exceptionally hot our house is. One girl joked, “You don’t need a housewarming. It’s warm enough already!”

All this makes working nights and trying to sleep during the day quite an experience. 

Especially when the electricity cuts frequently, leaving you laying on a hot mattress dripping sweat. It’s comparable to trying to sleep in a sauna. 

Not only are things heating up here in West Africa this time of year, but heat was brewing in my heart as well. I have a very strong passion for evangelism, something God has been building in me for quite some time now, so much so that I sometimes feel like Jeremiah with a fire in my bones. Lately, though, I recognize that the enemy has been twisting this desire into a self-righteous feeding. Either that or a guilt trip. Either way, I have felt like I have to share the gospel with everyone in order to please God, and that I’m not doing it good enough, and therefore feeling very inadequate and unsatisfied. Things were heating up in my heart like a concrete oven house in April in west Africa. 

I think I hit a breaking point the other day. I had worked all night and was exhausted but unable to sleep during the day because of (excuse me) an unfortunate explosion of diarrhea and vomiting. And the electricity was out. Like all day. In between frequent trips to the bathroom, I tossed and turned on my mattress, which felt like an electric blanket soaked with my own sweat. I felt like I was laying there dehydrating and withering, so I mustered the energy to get a bottle of water out of the fridge, which was also...hot. That’s when I realized that the electricity had been cut so long that even what was in the fridge had turned warm. 

That’s it. I got on my bicycle at 3:00 in the heat of the day and risked my dehydrated self passing out on the way to the missionary guest house, where I knew I could find at least some cold water and a fan to sleep under since they have a generator there. I was begging God for relief. 

That’s when I bumped into a missionary doctor, who had been at our housewarming the other night and realized how difficult it was for us to sleep in that heat. He posted on Facebook asking for donors to give $8 to pay for a nurse’s night’s stay in an air conditioned room, and in 24 hours, he had raised enough money to run an AC every night for the next five years. 

When he told me, I think I almost cried. 

I packed myself up right away and slept six solid hours in that AC room. And I praised  God for answering my cry for relief from the heat in such a tangible and actually bigger way than I could have imagined. 

But he wasn’t done answering my prayer. The next day, I was doing laundry by hand and hanging it up (because once again, the electricity cut, and it was in the middle of our washer’s cycle, and I didn’t want clothes sitting in dirty water for twelve hours). I finished and left the house to spend the night elsewhere, but I noticed the sky was ominously dark. Sure enough, later that evening, the wind blew up a storm and the rain came pouring down in sheets. I sighed with relief because God was answering my prayer again - chasing the heat away with a rain that will bring several days of cooler weather. Then it hit me. 

The laundry. 

I should have just let it sit in that dirty washer water. Instead, I was picturing it splattered across the yard in mud puddles, ten times dirtier than they were before. 

All that work for nothing. All my clean clothes thrown to the muddy ground. 

“Your righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Whispered my weary heart. 

And just as the rain dropped the air temperature twenty degrees and provided the relief my sick self had been praying for, the wind blew my righteous deeds to the ground and cooled off my heart that had been heated by trying once again to work to earn God’s pleasure. The relief I had been praying for. 

We need a good rain every now and then. One that will wash us of our self-righteousness and cool off our overheated pride. A rain that will relieve the pressure of working to please him, even in the realm as noble as evangelism, and remind us of how much he loves us and provides for our every need. Even the ones as small as an air conditioned room. Even the ones as large as forgiveness and grace for when I try in vain to earn his love. 

I sat outside and listened the rain, not thinking a thing more about my dirty laundry. It didn’t matter anymore. What mattered is that God heard my prayer for relief and sent the rain, not just to water west Africa but my weary heart as well, to remind me that evangelism is not a work we have to do in order to gain his affection, but a joy that we get to share because we are already accepted and affectionately loved. Because he has washed us clean and knocked our self-righteous laundry to the ground.


Comments

  1. I needed this right now, friend.

    Love you so,
    Michelle E.

    ReplyDelete

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