Worshipping With One Arm

On Wednesday I was getting ready for our communication team’s trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. I searched online for images to show how much people had suffered there during the wars. One picture showed a Congolese mom cradling a nursing baby with one arm. On the other side of her body where an arm should have been, there was just a stub with a bandage on the end. She had lost that arm defending her children from an attacker.

I showed the picture to my boss, Kristie, who is herself a mother, and said, “Look at all she’s gone through, but she’s still giving life. Even with what happened to her, she’s still a mom. They couldn’t take that away from her.” Kristie nodded and said, “She is a mom. You can take her arm, but you can’t take her kids.”

I wonder if I’ll meet ladies in the Congo whose children were taken from them—moms who would’ve gladly given their arms in place of their kids, but who weren't given that choice. I wonder what you do if you lose your arm, or worse, your child. I have no idea. How do you keep worshipping God from there? How do you make an altar at ground zero, when everything you had worth sacrificing is already gone? Maybe the people I meet in the Congo will know, and maybe they’ll teach me.