I HAVE SPOKEN of being in the Central Congo, and of the enrichment coming to the people through being in Christ. My African interpreter’s wife has branded on her cheeks and forehead unattractive tribal marks. Her parents wanted to marry her to a polygamous man. She ran away into the jungle and hid in a tree all night. Her sister had done the same thing and had been eaten by lions. When the interpreter wanted to marry her, the missionary who had raised him from a child objected because she was uneducated and “jungly.” The son born to them stood at the top of his class in Belgium in classes where French—to him a foreign language—was the medium of instruction. In America amid black students in Augusta, Georgia, where the medium of instruction was English, also a foreign language, he was chosen the valedictorian of his class. In Luluaburg, Congo, in a school amid Belgian students, he stood at the very top of his class. He is fluent in six languages. A white boy, irked at his brilliance, called him an “imbecile.” The principal suspended the boy for three days. The African boy went to the Belgian boy and said, “You didn’t mean that, did you?” When he said he didn’t and was sorry, he took the white boy to the principal and said: “I forgive him, will you please forgive him?” The principal did and reinstated him.
The white parents of the boys in this school saw a new Africa in the person of this lad. His parents and he are being enriched in Christ.
When we are in Christ, the whole personality is awakened. On this journey to the heart of the Belgian Congo I came through cannibal tribes, women wearing little but G-strings, to a mission station. It was like going from pitch darkness to light, from the Stone Age to Enlightenment, from life unenriched and poverty-stricken to life rich and full.
O Jesus, Lord, we thank Thee that Thy touch upon life is life giving. Withered life begins to bloom and dead life begins to live. The bad become good and the good become better and the better become the best. We thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “It yet remains to be seen what God can do with a surrendered life.”
