where the fruit trees are

I had the privilege last week to meet Dave McPherson of The Children of the Nile Foundation.  They are doing amazing work with HIV/AIDS widows through conferences, hospice, and agricultural projects in Uganda, a nation torn apart by HIV/AIDS, poverty, war, and corruption.  He was describing the way that they set widows up for success and self-sufficiency by providing them with groundnuts, maize, sorghum, pineapple suckers, and cassava stems (I've had cassava in Ghana in a food called fufu.  Good stuff.  Packed with carbs!). 

He said one phrase that struck me and has been ringing in my ears ever since.  He said, 'When you're driving through the districts where we work, you know where the widows are by the fruit trees.'  When you see fruit trees, you find widows!  How remarkable!  What would you expect to find surrounding HIV/AIDS widows in Uganda?  Predators, poverty, despair, and lives scraped out of dirt.  But instead you find fruit!  I can't get over it. 

In Ezekiel 47, the prophet has a vision.  A man leads him along a river flowing east from the Temple.  The river gets wider and wider and wider.  It finally dumps into the Dead Sea, a lifeless, salty, uninhabitable place.  Verse 8 says, 'when it empties into the Sea, the water there becomes fresh.'  Fisherman line the shores pulling out great numbers of many kinds of fish.  Verse 12 closes the story by telling us that 'fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river.  Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail.  Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them.  Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.'

What if we could travel through the poorest places on the planet and identify widows by their fruit trees? What if we could identify orphaned children by their smiles, their literacy, their hope for the future?  What if we could identify Christians by their love and compassion?  This is, after all, the life to which Jesus calls us.  I believe it is possible.  With God all things are possible.

Give hope.  Give help.  Be part of the Possibilities of God.