Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter, June 3, 2025
Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Uganda
Today’s memorial to the 45 Ugandan martyrs reminds me I want to write to Promise, our Compassion Ministries, child-turned teenager who lives in Uganda, as did Charles Lwanga. Promise wrote to us in February during their sunny season. He was hoping for rain to give them good crops.
A bountiful rain you showered down, O God, upon your inheritance.
Perhaps the political climate in Uganda is quieter now than in 1886, when European nations were scrambling for control of African natural resources – by invasion, occupation, division, colonization and annexation. In less than 50 years European control (Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal and Spain) went from 10 to 90%, made possible by the Suez Canal, railroads, the telegraph and quinine. Anglicans, Catholics, and Muslims came along with religious differences. The boys were killed as King Mwanga was failing to maintain control over both his sexual urges, the various religions in his country, and his national borders. What a mess.
Promise’s future is, we hope, promising. I hope life is easier for him now. The conflicts between religions continue, but with less drastic consequences for Catholic, Anglican and Muslim believers. Do they simply simmer, waiting for something to create a boiling point? For Promise, I pray that doesn’t matter, that he can choose to live his life outside the hot pot of religious and political strife.
You know how I lived among you
the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.
I served the Lord with all humility
and with the tears and trials that came to me
because of the plots of the Jews,
and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,
or from teaching you in public or in your homes.
I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks
to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.
But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.
What will happen to me there I do not know.
Of course Promise might not want to keep things slow and easy. Like Paul, he might ask difficult questions or have difficult answers. He might feel a call from heaven, a mission from God, to speak out for and against, as did Paul …
What will happen to me in Jerusalem I do not know,
except that in one city after another
the Holy Spirit has been warning me
that imprisonment and hardships await me.
Paul was leaving those he loved in Ephesus for parts unknown. That could of course be the way for any of us, including Promise. I have been reading about Edgar Cayce, who grew up in western Kentucky and at age 10 vowed to read the Bible through at least once each year. His life was transformed two years later when he fell asleep with his head on a spelling book he couldn’t understand, but when he awoke he could spell every word in the book.
Mr. Cayce remained a Christian throughout his life, teaching Sunday School while he developed his talent as a psychic and clairvoyant in the back of his Hopkinsville photography studio. His fame spread around the world, especially for his medical advice for sick people he had never met.
Edgar Cayce heard the Holy Spirit and followed the path he saw before him. Paul did that. Charles Lwanga did that too. Promise is 16. What will happen next in his life, where does his road lead? I hear Paul’s words and gaze inside, asking myself the same question.
But I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace …
God is a saving God for us;
The Lord, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
(Acts 20, Psalm 68, John 14, John 17)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
