I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jer. 29:11)
Before you roll your eyes at someone taking this verse out of context for the millionth time, I’m aware of the context. The people of Judah & Jerusalem were about to go into a seventy year period of captivity in a foreign land, and the future seemed utterly hopeless. But the thing is, people need hope to survive – especially when things appear bleak. So God sent this word of hope, this good news, to His people through Jeremiah, nestled right in the middle of a message of judgement and ‘bad news.’ It would be something to hang on to.
And what got me thinking about hope recently, was a somewhat bizarre experience at the hotel where I’m staying in N’Djamena, Chad. This hotel is a little off the beaten path and not one frequented by visitors from the West. But affordable and nice enough. (OK, in this type of hotel, the toilet seat will most likely be broken, there may or may not be hot water for the shower, the decor – if there is any – will be gauche and not in line with western sensibilities – and there may be a vase of plastic flowers on the ornate, faux marble coffee table. But if it’s clean and reasonably comfortable, I really don’t care). So what happened in this hotel, before I took off for a long road trip to get things done in several towns down south, not far from the border with Central African Republic?
Our first night here was peaceful enough… but the next day, as we were having a work meeting on a balcony looking out over the front courtyard and entrance, two buses – very full buses – pulled up and discharged a hoard of mostly young men. Within a few more minutes, they were coming up the stairs (no elevator here), and dispersing everywhere to find their assigned rooms. Several of them, one after another, interrupted our meeting to greet us as you would normally do in a rural village setting. And nothing was peaceful after that. This group had obviously never been in a hotel before, and probably had never been in the city either. They were as lost in this building as I would be in Kathmandu, roaming up and down the corridors, banging on doors and sometimes opening unlocked doors trying to find their friends, or sometimes just their own rooms. They called to each other at the top of their voices as if they were back in the village herding camels. It was mayhem, and I was intrigued – who were they and why were they all here? At first I was mistakenly told they were Chadian nationals repatriated from Sudan because of the ongoing war there. It didn’t seem that any of them spoke French, just Chadian Arabic, but I really wanted to talk to one of them and get their story.
The next day I was able to have that conversation. As I was passing one of these guys in the hallyway on my floor – someone who seemed a bit older than most of them – I stopped to ask him if he spoke French, and he did. I asked him where they were from and why they were here. His accent was a bit strange to my ears, and I’m sure mine was to his as well, but we both made an effort to connect and communicate. I’m usually not this persistent with a stranger, but it just felt important to understand. And what was the story? He and all the others had just arrived from Libya, which was not at all what I’d expected.
They were all Chadian nationals from the north – a desert region – and had all at one time or another crossed over the border into Libya, illegal immigrants looking for work, for a way forward, for some kind of a future. There is little opportunity for education, for work, or for any kind of advancement if you’re a young person in one of these northern villages – unless you want to simply be a livestock herder and barely eke out an existence in an increasingly harsh climate. Like so many do, they had crossed over the border into Libya with some meager hope of a better life.
So what happened? I’ll be direct here and just say it – people in the Arab world in places like Libya bear extreme prejudice against black Africans and treat them shamefully. One by one, all these young men were arrested and put in prison. Some had been there just 3 or 4 months, some longer. All had suffered. The Chadian ambassador to Libya had negotiated for their release, and just the day before I spoke with this man, whose name is Moussa, by the way, they had been released from prison at 1 a.m. and transported directly to N’Djamena. The government put them up in this hotel and they were to receive 2 days of training to help them reintegrate into society here in Chad. There was some conjecture that the government was going to give each of them a certain sum of money to get resettled. My heart. So much struggle, so little hope, so much desperation that would force people to venture into a country where racism against black Africans and terrible mistreatment are well-known facts.
I asked Moussa what his dream – his hope – for the future was. He told me if he could get the start-up money, he wanted to be a ‘commerçant.’ (A French word for a shopkeeper, merchant, businessman). A practical, reasonable hope – nothing grand or outrageous, but maybe as out of reach as the moon. Moussa was soft-spoken, with a kind face and a gentle smile. I asked him if he had heard of Jesus.
“Well of course,” he replied. So I encouraged to him to pray in the name of Jesus, to ask God to reveal Himself and to direct his steps, to show him the way forward. I shared a little bit with him about how sick I had been with cancer 10 years ago, and how sure I was that I was going to die. I told him how Jesus assured me I would live and then brought me back to health. I wanted so much to share hope with Moussa, to impart it to him, to make sure he walked away from that encounter with some measure of hope firmly planted in his heart. I asked him if I could pray for him, and he gladly accepted. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but I put my hopes for Moussa into that prayer, that he would know Jesus and the eternal hope we can have in Him, and that our good Father in heaven would make a way for him in the here and now and provide his needs. He seemed genuinely touched and shook my hand warmly as we said our farewells.
I’ll be honest and say that there’s a side of me that wanted to be irritated and put out that this unruly group, who were so clueless about city etiquette, much less hotel etiquette, had to show up at this particular hotel during my brief stay, just when I really needed a few good nights of rest before the next grueling leg of this work trip. But on the other hand, maybe this was more of an opportunity that an annoying coincidence. As I said at the start of this little story, people need hope to survive, life can be so much harder than we realize for so many, and desperation can push people to trespass all kinds of borders. So let’s not be quick to disapprove, to frown and judge. Let’s share the hope we have in abundance as believers in Jesus. Maybe that encounter with Moussa was a divine appointment, and maybe he walked away from our brief conversation with a new kind of hope.
Know This Love 