A Passport Through Darkness

I will warn you up front, this book is not for the feint of heart. It is raw and full of ugly truths about what goes on right under our noses in this evil world. But if, like the author, the "pursuit of the American Dream (is) eating (you) alive," and you long to know that "There's a way to live both responsibly and passionately. Just because we're taught to 'find a job, make a living, buy a house, create a family, and amass retirement funds' doesn't mean we have to follow that model..." then you need to pick up a copy of this book and read it.

I won't tell you all about the author's story, because that's what the book does far better than I could summarize. I will tell you though that this woman has seen and experienced evil firsthand in the African country of Sudan...specifically, the region known as Darfur.

If you've been anywhere near a TV set or any other news media outlet over the last ten years, then you've probably heard of Darfur. Like me, you may not fully comprehend what has happened and continues to happen there. About a year and a half ago, I saw the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback and wrote a blog post about it. For the first time, I understood a little better the horrible genocide that was taking place there. I confess, it has not been ever-present in my mind, but Kimberly Smith has walked beside, held the hands of and stared into the hopeless eyes of those who can never escape the reality of what took place.

To this day, Smith and her ministry Make Way Partners fight to protect orphans from being taken into slavery, eaten by wild dogs and hyenas or forced to serve as child soldiers in armies that have been bitterly fighting over this region for five decades!

Do you need to know that one person can be used by God to make a difference? Here are more great quotes from the book:

"The following is His story, as lived through me to this point."

"But who of us wants to give up our notion of what we think our lives should look like so that we are available for Him to use?"

"...these women (in Darfur) shared whatever they had with each other. If one had a pair of shoes and another did not, when the one without shoes had to walk a long way, the one with shoes would share whatever she possessed."

"I wanted others to see there was something more important than going to church and coming home to a clean and orderly home."

But unfortunately, when Smith shared her eyewitness accounts of what was taking place, most American Christians scoffed, laughed, and turned away from any prospect of assisting the cause of saving even one life. When asked by one organization (I believe it was Voice of the Martyrs) to do a "death census" of how many children would attend school and then disappear...often for unknown reasons...Smith was astounded at the results. In a nine month period, 270 children were never heard from again. They had either been kidnapped or killed by soldiers, had been eaten by the wild dogs and hyenas, or fallen out of the trees where they sought refuge to sleep and plummeted to their deaths. Orphans sleep in the "bush" trying to avoid detection from the Janjaweed who have massacred countless people in villages around the Darfur region.

I have to confess that this book challenged my American Christian foundation. I know that God never promised us that when we served Him, it would be a cakewalk. But the "prosperity gospel" is so ingrained in American church teaching that coming face-to-face with suffering because you are serving God was deeply unsettling to me.

"I knew the biggest reason for my anger was that my spoiled life in America had taught me that I was not supposed to suffer. I wasn't supposed to have a sore back, a dry mouth, or an empty belly. At home, if something hurt, I took a pill."

I get it...I have no concept of what true suffering is! Shame on me...shame on all of us!

"My fear was a good thing; it drove me to ask God for patience with my ignorance, mercy for my arrogance, and grace for courage and insight."

"When I dared to look closely at how Jesus spent His time on earth--and the fact that he called me to follow Him--I began to face the fact that most of what I'd been living for--comfort, status, even good things like church buildings or who won the next presidential election--didn't really matter. The only life that matters was one that beat from the same rhythm as His."

"Those of us who wake up longing to know more than the rote answers our culture gives us--who long to recapture that dream God first held as he formed us in His hands--will indeed risk all to live that dream, be that dream."