Only God can rescue Zimbabwe!

On Sunday I arrived in Jeffreys Bay, very much ready for a holiday after probably the longest and busiest term I've ever had at Rhodes University. I am still hoping for a vacation filled with seeking God's face and hearing his voice, getting my mind and heart in order for the next semester and the plans I must make for next year.

When evening comes, I sat down and watch the news to find that Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from Zimbabwe's runoff elections this week. My immediate reaction was, "I need to pray." I'm so saddened that a faint glimmer of hope for Zimbabwe has died. Nevertheless, I can only think that the MDC made the right decision: if Tsvangirai had won the run-off, Zanu-PF may well have unleashed civil war, as Mugabe has threatened many times over the past few weeks. Even after the withdrawal, the situation is still perilous. How long can this last?

So after the news and after I finished supper, I knelt down and flipped through my Bible for one of those nice psalms that rages at the injustice of it all and calls down thunder and lightning from heaven on evil people who just carry on prospering. I settled on Psalm 10, which expressed more or less what I was feeling at the time. The wonderful thing about psalms like these, though, is that they rarely end in anger. Through writing the psalm, the author works through his emotions to the point where he is able to give them all to God, and trust him to deal with the wicked. (Incidentally, this is also Exhibit A in my argument that emo rock can add a lot to our understanding of worship!) Psalm 10 ends this way:

"Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will listen to their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
So people can no longer terrify them." (Psalm 10:17–18, NLT)

I love it! God will not let the helpless remain helpless. Justice will come, if not in this life then in the life to come. And the Lord is still in control.

All of this explains why I was so amused when Mugabe pronounced last week that only God could remove him from office. Funnily enough, a prayer point in my church's bulletin from Sunday 15 June (a few days before Mugabe said this) said "Pray for the land of ZIMBABWE...only God can restore this land and its people." When I was shopping with a Zimbabwean friend on Sunday before I left to Grahamstown, she took one look at the newspapers and said "I'm so glad [Mugabe's] said that. It challenges God to take him out."

I, for one, hope God rises to the provocation, but I know that his plans are not ours and his sense of timing is far better than our limited thinking. He doesn't need to pander to Robert Mugabe's threats, but I know he loves the people of Zim. So let's pray for them right now. Pray that the Lord will be glorified in that country, despite all human plans.

Please pray also for us: a group of seven of us from Grahamstown Baptist Church's 222 Men's Ministry are travelling up to Zimbabwe to join in Chisipite Baptist Church's men's camp at Mana Pools on the Zambezi. It promises to be an amazing time of teaching and relaxation, but pray that we'll be safe travelling through Zimbabwe on our way there and back, and that we can be a blessing and encouragement to those who are suffering there. When we come back, I'll let you know how it went.