War Stories

Last Saturday, Jennifer told me to grab a chair and to come out on the porch. Sitting out on the front porch is common pastime here. While out on the porch, you may people watch, may talk, may enjoy the afternoon or evening breeze from the coastal winds, or may just simply sit in comfortable silence with friends. So I picked up my plastic chair and headed toward the porch to sit with the family.

But a new person was there, and Jennifer introduced me to her childhood friend, who she had not seen in over twenty years. While walking to the market that morning, she recognized him and thought that she was seeing a ghost. Over twenty years ago, she and everyone else in her neighborhood thought he was killed in the war, but he escaped and sojourned as a refugee around Africa. And I felt very privileged to sit on the porch and to listen to their childhood stories, stories about life before the war, and life during the war.

When meeting people, I hear a lot of stories about the war. I must confess that it is strange to have war and displacement as a part of everyday conversation. Since these stories do not belong to me, I will not write them here but will share some general themes:

I have heard stories about people who went on vacation and could not return back to Liberia for several years. I heave heard stories about people who fled to other countries and how they struggled to make it back to their homeland. People have shared stories of families returning their destroyed homes and having to start all over again. I have listened to stories about how Providence Baptist Church provided shelter and was a safe space for so many people during the war.

“The war” is the Liberian civil war from 1990-2003. To learn more about Liberia and the civil war, check out Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia#1989_and_1999_civil_wars) for a brief summary, or read "The House at Sugar Beach" by Helene Cooper. For most people, the 1990s were a period of great turmoil. The war destroyed all of the country’s power lines and infrastructure in general, and most of it has not been rebuilt. I have read about the war and have heard about the bloodiness, the child soldiering, the brutal political executions, the separated families, and the burning of homes. I cannot even fathom the feelings of loss, confusion, fear, and trauma. But the people of Providence Baptist Church amaze me because they continue to praise God with such loud joy and have such resilience. Every worship service, the worship leader shouts,

“God is good!”

And the congregation responds back, “All the time!”

Then the worship leader says, “All the time…”

Congregation exclaims, “God is good!”

I can only aspire to have that kind of deep, reverberating joy which is rooted in trusting Christ at all times.