comfortable asleep in bed

I hate it that I don't hear about important global news. This country's news service is so parochial that it sometimes takes a miracle. All I've heard today is that homes will be charged more for the garbage we create! And we worry about the recession from down south affecting us. But this world is connected - we are connected if we feel it important enough. My friend adopted the Beeja people in sub-Saharan Africa and has endeavoured to learn everything he can about their history and world.

I have deep connections to Rwanda. A dear friend, Lesley, lost her husband in the genocide and she was out of the country on coast. His body never found. When the news finally filtered out I was shocked. Years later watching Hotel Rwanda I was touched but watching British documentaries made me realize about real brutality and violence unrestrained even within the Christian church. I cried reading Lesley's book about her own journey of loss. Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the genocide, was broken by his experience. he wrote a book and said this.

I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God.

Rwanda is somewhere I am sensitive to. Half an hour ago I found out there was an earthquake in Rwanda on Sunday. A smallish one around magnitude 5 and significant numbers attending church were killed because the buildings collapsed. I read that government official will be examining whether they were constructed appropriately.

But what touched me was another friend Chrissie in Rwanda, who emailed news out as she took relief supplied to Nkombo, an island in the affected area.

On arrival we walked 6 km around the island, seeing the problems for our selves, and giving out clothes, soap and other essential items ( most we already had in our containers and so we were able to take 10 large bags with us / as much as the canoe could hold ) Nearly all the homes made from wooden struts and mud have fallen or a wall has fallen

One old man really touched me . His home was missing the front and the roof blown off ...his bed was still were it should have been but covered in rubble .... another widow led me to her home, now a pile of bricks on the floor. Her 6 year old daughter took hold of my hand and we walked around the island together , her holding with a vice like grip!

We're too often comfortable and asleep in our beds. We deny even the reality outside our front door. There are those without beds to sleep in here and there.

Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Luke 9:58