Wish Upon a Black Star

Life is filled with circles if you ask me.  There are so many things that I see around me that confirm what God has said to me.  Once I entered the mission field I never doubted what I was called to do for one moment.  I started traveling abroad when I was still a teenager and over and over I saw so many things that drew my heart to this kind of life.  I got married nearly sixteen years ago and when I met Lovely I never doubted that we would travel together.  It never entered my mind to leave her or the children we have behind.  I know the dangers.  I know what it’s like to be threatened with guns and knives and fists yet the compulsion to go is stronger than I can resist.  Now here I am seeing that this is for sure what God said and now my wife and children walk this road too.  Yes, life is a circle.

 

Jiminy Cricket talks about wishing on a star…well, I’ve wished upon a black starand here we are twenty years later watching this wish come true.  We visited a place where Ghana has a memorial to her first president.  Ghana has seen turmoil and as I witnessed this statue damaged in tumultuous times past I think of how there were times when it seemed the vision God has given me to return here was just as shattered.  The guide droned on and on about how the CIA saw to it that their president was assassinated…when in fact he died of cancer.  My irritation faded some as I thought of the things that swirled around our lives that made it seem we’d never get to Ghana.  My eye caught this sight and again the circle of God’s kept promises came to mind.  Nothing could stop the events set in motion when I visited Ghana at 18 and wished upon a black star.  This fountain represents the tribes joining together to herald the entrance of some great event…I couldn’t help but hear destiny proclaimed from these silent horns.  This monument to Ghana’s president spoke to me not of some great man but like the statue pointed to something else.  God is the hope of the nations.  God is the hope of our lives.  Salvation isn’t a collective thing it’s a personal thing.  We can’t save ourselves but I know for sure that those that call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.  Underneath it all, in spite of the irritating anti-Americanism the guide was speaking and in spite of the financial impossibilities we knew just a short time before this trip, here we were doing something completely supernatural, nothing man could say or the Devil could muster could stop that.  I felt that the fountain spoke something somehow prophetic.  No matter what happens in Ghana this fountain stands as a symbol of some great event and like that the promise of God stands through all opposition and stood strong for us once again.  Other statues bore instruments that represent the other regions of Ghana.  This is meant to show the unity of the tribes.  I know for sure this can only happen though God but I wonder…did the builder of this fountain even know what great event would occur that would bring the unity and prosperity Ghana so desperately seeks?  Surrounded by these symbols of strength and unity I couldn’t help but feel that the answer to that question is still no.  Material wealth is not the mortar that holds any nation together though many pursue it with a terrible reasoning that abandons God and allows the erosion of all that’s moral and right.  Here this monument shows Ghana’s first president pointing away from the black star that’s become their symbol but I believe that it’s Christ in them that is the hope of glory.