PRAYER LETTER NO.22

 Gilbo@cbinf.com www.su-burundi.org
BP2260, Bujumbura, Burundi, Africa Tel: 00 (257) 962411
Dear Tigers, 1st March 2003

I thought I’d write a letter before the war begins in Iraq and little insignificant oil-less Burundi is even more forgotten than usual. I don’t want to open a can of worms, but I feel so deeply angry at the world’s injustices, and outraged at the moral high ground that the USA and the UK claim right now. I mean, this morning as I write I am listening to the sounds of shelling and machine-guns as people are being murdered a few miles away – RIGHT NOW! And who kindly makes the weapons for these misguided Burundians to blow each other’s limbs off? The good old ‘Great’ British arms industry, which is the second biggest in the world – do you know which is the biggest? And who organised the assassination of the first democratically-elected president of Congo, plunging the nation into four decades of bloodshed, in which in the last three years alone about THREE MILLION people have died, just in the East across the lake from me? The good old USA (through the CIA, but don’t tell anyone). And that’s just in Central Africa…

So of course we all want to get rid of Saddam, but please, Bush and Blair, stick your ‘morality’ where the sun don’t shine. When did morality ever come into foreign policy? It’s money that makes your (and many of our) worlds go round.

Having just been ridiculously reductionist and simplistic (yes, I do realise it), let’s have a look at what war does. How about an authentic example from Ruyigi this week, where fighting has been raging between the army and the country's largest rebel group: Maison Shalom has been completely overrun and overwhelmed by the arrival of thirteen malnourished babies with bulging stomachs and oversized heads. They lie two by two in cribs in five different rooms. Most of their mothers died during childbirth, others were killed while fleeing the fighting, leaving their babies helpless in the bush. Some babies were brought to the shelter after three weeks in the bush, only to die on arrival. Of a total of eighteen such babies brought in last week, five have since died. The others are undergoing intense medical care. “Eighteen newborn babies mean that eighteen mothers have died helplessly. Things have gone too far. Silence is complicity,” said the main lady there, Marguerite Barankitse (IRIN). Meantime, these dirt poor unfortunate people whose babies die are charged $10 to get the body back to give ‘it’ a decent burial, but many can’t afford that sum, so the callous authorities just throw away the mangy bundle of flesh. This is not war and its consequences in the abstract from the pristine corridors of political power or from a comfy suburban living room…

Boom, Boom! Another two shells. In the next few days, I may find out that one of those big bangs killed someone I care about, as happened a few months ago. It is so surreal. Last weekend, my team drove up to Kayanza in the North, which had been attacked twice in the week with pitched battles in the town at night. It was quiet for our visit, and we were able to show a film to a massive crowd, as well as preach and worship together. One group of people arrived at 4pm, having set off 60km away at 4am. I was profoundly humbled by such a demonstration of spiritual hunger. How far would I walk to listen to someone talking about Jesus? Many were touched by the Lord.

We were due to go upcountry this weekend as well, but have put it off for a couple of weeks. Around the country there are a lot of bad things happening. In fact, these next few months will be interesting, as the Tutsi president prepares to hand over power for the second eighteen-month phase of transitional rule to a Hutu. It is extremely tense, and people are very pessimistic about the peace process.

So please continue in daily praying for peace – in Iraq, as well as in Burundi and the Congo. And also for the (another shell just landed) leaders and shapers of our global village, (and again) to have wisdom and integrity of motive in what they decide, which may not affect their gross affluence but certainly does affect untold millions of faceless and voiceless souls who wallow in misery and oppression.

We should not need a war in Iraq to get us on our knees. We are all to be engaged in spiritual warfare, and the battle is just as real in the West, although maybe more subtle. I concur with what John Piper says in ‘Let the Nations be Glad’:

“Most people show by their priorities and casual approaches to spiritual things that they believe we are in peace, not in wartime… In wartime we are on the alert. We are armed. We are vigilant. In wartime we spend money differently, because there are more strategic ways to maximise our resources. The war effort touches everybody. We all cut back. The luxury liner becomes a troop carrier... Who considers that the casualties of this war do not merely lose an arm or an eye or an earthly life, but lose everything, even their own soul, and enter a hell of everlasting torment?”

He goes on: “Probably the number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is that we try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom. Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for… But what have millions of Christians done? We have stopped believing that we are in a war. No urgency, no watching, no vigilance. No strategic planning. Just easy peace and prosperity. And what did we do with the walkie-talkie? We tried to rig it up as an intercom in our houses- not to call in fire power for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask for more comforts in the den…”

Hmmm…

Apologies for any offence caused, and for the angry tone of this missive, but it’s from my heart, and it’s how I feel. You don’t have to agree with me. But we have a duty to be as well-informed as possible and to get our hands dirty in this sick world.

Pleading on my knees,

Simon Guillebaud