We have heard the reasons: “God does not create evil but allows it”, that “we live in an imperfect world”.  Such reasoning may explain the injustice but does not diminish the responsibility to act.  In fact to be aware yet indifferent makes us equally accountable.  While God may allow for injustice in the world, He enables and equips His people to address the inequities and respond to the needs.

We look at our situation in South Sudan, a nation which was born just over a year ago. We were not invited by a particular church nor came to take the place of one retiring.  We came because there was a need, because we had skills to offer, because we were available…. but principally, because we were called.    

A short while after arriving, our ABC partner, Interchurch Medical Assistance (IMA), was approached by authorities in Upper Nile, one of the ten states in this new country.  Women were dying during childbirth at unacceptable rates because of lack of skilled care. 

We were asked to build and equip five maternities and birthing centers in isolated areas of the state where maternal mortality was staggering.  In addition to building the facilities, there were no doctors so we would have to train nurses to do deliveries, no roads so we would have to fly everything in including cement, no electricity so we would have to supply power.   In short, a near impossible task, but not for God, as “His are the cattle on a thousand hills”!  We found the funding and built five centers, we recruited 13 young nurses from the villages and sent them to Kenya for advanced training, we imported containers, flew in equipment, established a supply chain of medicine, and provided solar lighting and electricity.  Nine months to the day the nurses are back, the buildings erected, the facilities equipped……and pregnant women come for help, over a hundred in the first month of operation, to each of the five facilities.

God is aware of the suffering in places such as Congo, Haiti, and South Sudan.   He allows the anguish for a time but compels and enables ordinary people like you and me to respond. The difference in these five birthing centers may not be measurable on a global scale but is manifest on an individual one.    As we celebrate the joy of the newborn Christ this Christmas season we remember as well the lives of these women and their babies in South Sudan who are loved and cherished by God.  Pain and suffering exist wherever we serve, but He has overcome such sorrow… and more!

“It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy.” (John 16:21)