Sunday evening I felt the need to step out of our wattle-and-dube house for a moment. As I walked further away from the light shining through our mosquito screened windows, the darkness of this land swallowed me. I looked up and marvelled at the millions of tiny, shiny dots covering the cloudless sky from end to end. In the south-east, a yellow sliver of the moon lies on its “back”, with a tiny star to the right, like a beauty spot on the corner of a mouth. The moon is smiling, I though. How appropriate! As I stood there, marvelling in God’s creation – the stars seem so close from lack of any artificial light, that it feels like one can touch it! – I heard a voice…
It’s our neighbour’s voice. I listened closer. He is reading… He is reading from God’s Word… He is reading to his family from the translated eMwinika Scripture! Suddenly my heart runs over, spilled over my cheeks and a smile broader than that of the moon spread across my face: Amer is reading the Bible to his family around the evening fire! Later I hear the voice of one of the Bible teachers as Amer plays the audio to his family, making sure that they do not miss out on anything; making sure that he shares and witness first in and through his home.
How beautiful the voice of a man reading Scripture to his family! What a miracle to hear that one voice in the total darkness of a Mwinikaland night! How amazing to hear, to experience how far God has brought this people, from total darkness and NO knowledge of who He is and the saving grace of His Son, to a man sharing with his family all he knows so that they too may know the Truth and be saved. How significant in a culture where the father has little say over his family; where fathers often disengage because their authority at home is thwarted by that of men in his wife’s family (according the matrilineal system).
This one voice in the darkness, reading to HIS family, making sure they know and understand God and his Word… what can be a greater witness to God’s miracle in changing lives than this?
(Photo: Jeffrey Roszhart, August 2013)