“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”
– 1 Corinthians 15:54 –
When Comrades Fall
We have been intertwined with YWAM here in Arusha for many years now. Teaching at their Maasai Discipleship Training School, hosting leaders seeking the Father for new vision and mission here at the Wild Hope Retreat Center, sending off outreach teams going to the unreached in Southern Tanzania, linking arms together to see mission leaders trained through the Kairos program, and, recently, hosting a team from Kona, Hawaii.
Training Sunday School teachers in Maasailand with YWAM-Kona in January.
Sowing eternal seeds in young hearts.
But now, they were returning without eight of their fellow leaders and friends. Those sadly, had their ultimate graduation and were at home forever with Jesus. The dearly loved Arusha director John Mukolwe whom we have known and respected and two other staff from the Arusha base here had graduated with them taking the total to 11. This letter from Darlene Cunningham, co-founder of YWAM with her husband Loren, explains more what happened.
The accident that took them home was horrendous. I looked at the pictures of the bus…the twisted metal so flimsy…trying to peer into the path to eternity our brothers and sisters took. But the gate from here to there just looked strangely like a mistake…failed hydraulics on a truck…lives snuffed out…others maimed. Oh Jesus I don’t understand! Are you still good?
On the way to the airport we passed the fateful intersection cleaned up now and looking strangely normal, gouges in the tarmac the only sign of the carnage one week before that claimed a total of 25 lives. We turned away…some groaned softly as we passed.
At the airport I was trying to find out to whom the blue suitcases in the back of my car belonged. Finally, someone told me they belonged to one who died in the accident and were being flown back to loved ones.
I looked at the worn cases…scratched, shabby, and couldn’t help but chuckle…so obviously a missionary’s luggage…someone who wasn’t all that impressed with the accruements of this world.
Looking at those suitcases I again tried to peer from the material into the eternal. But there was nothing to see. The dusty luggage was just a tool…a shadow.
As I contemplated all of this, a small breeze blew across my face. Like a murmur of angels in the evening sky…whispering, like the ones of old at the empty tomb, “They are not here; they have risen.”
And so they have.
They have gone before us…
Our comrades.
Fallen in this world but raised eternal in the next.
God is still good. But He’s also eternal. It’s His very nature. And He calls us to eternal things.
The days are short brothers and sisters. May we live, as our YWAM friends, as sojourners in the earth…known for what we carry in our heart more than the luggage in our hands.