Fun in the furnace

I got into a minibus one day with the funniest conductor. I remember laughing so hard when he said, " Everyone in this country [Zimbabwe] is a freedom fighter. As long as you've lived through 2008, you are a freedom fighter." Indeed, 2008 was the hardest year Zimbabwe had to endure in the 21st century. This was the same year hyper-inflation just hyped up beyond quadrillions and the 'bearer cheques' we used as money couldn't hold any more zeros.  What's interesting for me is, this very same year, was one of the most delightful times of my life.

I lived in Rujeko, Masvingo, with my older brother. It was just the two of us most times. There was no electricity 8 days a week, and no water half the time. If we ran out of no-need-to-cook suppers, we had to buy some firewood from down the street to make food. The firewood was almost always not dry, making it difficult to start the fire. This must have taught me some patience; and some gratitude for whoever discovered electricity😏.

Being in a queit house for most of the day, I spent my time reading, writing and meditating. It was during this time I got to understand of an intimacy with the Most High that I never knew existed. My brother and I would share stuff about the Word of God that would make everything else in this world seem so small. I remember feeling super invincible...like absolutely nothing was impossible. 

Supermarkets were literally empty, some completely closed down. People had to queue up for hours to get basic commodities like sugar, bread or mealie meal. We barely had any school that entire year because teachers were on strike and there wasn't enough food to feed us in boarding school (😁 story for another day). A lot in the country seemed all gloomy. Many were despaired. But it was then that God turned our eyes from worldly cares to Him. Church was the only place I looked forward to going. In fact, I wished everyday would be a Sunday. We held church services in an auditorium in Charles Austin Theatre, in Masvingo's city centre. It didn't matter what I wore or how I looked, all I wanted was to enjoy as much as I could in unified worship to God. I look back now and I remember standing on the dark upper rows of the theatre, raising my hands up as if grasping for air; yearning to be saved from drowning in the sea of worldly things. And when I'd elevate to a higher realm, it was like soaring up high in the sky. It felt indescribably surreal. We had the kind of services where people would be looking for their shoes afterwards. It would be a special kind of chaos in the church as the Holy Spirit ministered to each individual differently, making the congregation look like a bunch of uncontollable psychos who just smoked an entire field of the strongest greens. There's no greater high. There's truly no greater high. Getting to be that incredibly intimate with God is the greatest experience any human being could ever have. 

Now, if anyone asks me how I know about this God I pray to...I can tell them with no scratch of a doubt that I have seen Him. I have seen Him at work in ways no man can comprehend. I have seen Him bring smiles to faces so pale with hunger they don't know where their next meal is gonna come from. I have seen Him instruct hearts to give the last of the little they had. I have seen him light up the darkest of hearts, transforming even those humanity had labelled retarded and discarded to garbage. I tell you, I have seen him sustain people that are just hoping from prayer to prayer coz the world around them bombards them with hopelessness the moment they say Amen. Hope to the despaired, faith to the discouraged, joy to the downcast - the sound of Heaven touching earth.
Troubles, out of our way, we are just passing through to our eternal home far beyond this broken world.

2008 might have been a furnace, but it sure was a glorious one. And we came out glistening; polished. God was, still is, and will forever be God. 

HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER.