Job

There are so many sick and suffering people I have come across in my time here. Most of them even in their strength, show so much desperation and pain. But I want to tell you about a man I met that changed my life. As we were visiting house after house of so many families affected by Aids, I walked up to a man with his back facing me. He was sitting in a chair with his shirt off because it was so unbelievably hot out. As I came up to the side of him, the first thing I saw was his body. It looked like a corpse. He was completely bones and skin. I purposely am changing the phrase "skin and bones" to "bones and skin" to emphasize that its not a phrase of him being skinny... you could literally see his bones coming out of his skin. This picture shows you.

But, the minute I looked at his face..my mind flipped from "He looks dead" to "He looks alive". His face was so alive! We made eye contact and He smiled so gracefully and looked thrilled to have visitors. I could tell in that moment that not only his mind was sharp, but that He knew the Lord. There is no way someone that sick with HIV could be as happy as he was...and quite honestly, could be alive. He was kind of mesmerizing. I just kept watching him and He looked so peaceful. He started talking to us about his life. And started out by saying, "God will heal me"... Then he told us about how sick he is, how he doesn't have strength to work, how his wife thinks he is crazy for loving God so she left him, how his kids are all gone, he doesn't have food, medicine, or clean water....He has nothing except for a small hut to live in, a couple of shirts, and a friend from the village who cares for him. But He didn't seem to mind. He had the presence of God with him. How could he have so much faith in God's healing power when everything has been taken from him?

Then he went into the story of Job from the Bible. He talked about how his life is similar to Job's. He had everything taken from him and is so sick that he can't do anything for himself, but He still praises the Lord. He knows God is there and he worships and loves him regardless of what his circumstances are. When another thing is trampling on his life, he faithfully gives the situation to God and praises Him over and over. (Later when I got back to my house, I read Job and had chills with how similar the two stories were). The whole time he was talking, he was so confident and capturing. And he was looking directly at me a lot of time, probably because I had a waterfall of tears running down my face because he was so moving and...rare. I kept thinking of how often I get mad at God when something doesn't go the way I want it to, or when I get really sick in a time that I can't lay in my bed and recover. That's NOTHING compared to what this man deals with on a day to day basis....and He worships the Lord like no one I've ever seen. Honestly, my words in this story don't even do it justice. Even as I'm writing this, it doesn't feel complete..... bc it's hard to describe in words. He loves God and believes He can heal him....and you can see it all over his face. When you look at a man as sick as him, you expect to see hopelessness. But this man, Fabiao (that I now call Job), has peace and joy in his face that is so contagious. I don't know if I will ever see him again on this earth, but I can't wait to see him completely healed and rejoicing in Heaven. I feel completely honored and transformed from having met him...and I told him just that. I've never seen an old man smile as big as he did in that moment. I LOVE him. I'm praying I never forget how faithful he was and that I can adopt, absorb, embed in me, and live out that kind of faith.