The ride home is a long one. With so many hours spent sitting in airplanes, breathing the recycled stale air, with muscles cramped from a lack of exercise, eating food from sterile little packages, with tiny utensils, while squeezed into undersized seats, rubbing shoulders with strangers, there is time to think.
While it is a long ride home, in other ways it seems too short. There should be galactic distances between the realities we have seen during our time in Africa and the realities we face as we arrive home. A few hours is not enough to gain the necessary distance between the tarps, tents, and squalor of the refugee camp and the opulence and wealth of our culture. An experience like this leaves a lasting impression and memories for those we left behind. Like the body's defence system that warns through pain, it is good to feel, to be aware -- that the pain is calling for change. A hand pulled back from the fire, a finger removed from the danger of the knife blade and a life changed is to live differently for the sake of part of the Body.
May God make us sensitive, not just to the suffering around us, but also to His desire to be involved.
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