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• Lent

A Dry Season

by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

2/25/2007

Lent I, Year C
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2,9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

"Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house." -- Deuteronomy 26:11

You probably have to move around anyway, in the best of times if you are a native of Chad -- the seasonal rhythm is dry/rainy, rather than our summer/winter. If you have animals, you and they both have to follow the water. Right now it's dry, the height of the dry season -- many people will not return to their villages until the rains come in May, when they will begin their short season of cultivation.

And these days, there are more people on the move: not only must you move around, you have company: refugees from Sudan. There are three large camps of Sudanese refuges in Farchana along the Chad/Sudan border, where Episcopal Relief and Development supplies clean water, health care, basic necessities in partnership with Action by Churches International (ACT). ERD also supports schools and mental health services for the traumatized women and children in the camps.

To be so challenged already, in so many ways, and to welcome the stranger anyway: this is Christlike. The Chadians haven't built a fence to keep out the neighbors who have known such suffering; with very little in the way of resources themselves, they have chosen instead to recognize kinship over difference, and they have had the sense to ask for help in order to make that recognition a source of blessing to all. It is our privilege to be the ones with the means to support this work.

Do they rejoice in the refugee camps? It may be that they are too numb with the horror of what has happened to them to do much rejoicing right now: it is a dry, dry season. But Christians always look forward, to the possibility of joy that God can bring out of great sorrow. We make a place for things to be other than as they are, and then we can wait for God to fill that place with his blessing.