biblical blindspots

             

           I recently went to a conference for Christian international schools in Kijabe, Kenya. One of the highlights of the conference was the keynote speaker, Dr. Randy Richards. He has lived and served as a missionary in Indonesia and is a professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

                He spoke about culture as an iceberg, with the noticeable things we usually talk about -- clothing, language, food -- as the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of the iceberg is what is below the surface, and it is what "goes without being said." As we read the Bible, we miss what "goes without being said" and we insert our own culture's norms. As Westerners, we have blind spots when we approach Scripture.

                At the conference Randy made it clear that he is not merely criticizing the West; every culture has blind spots, but he wrote a book targeted to white Western males because he is a white Western male. He hopes that every culture tries to critically examine the blind spots they may have when it comes to Scripture.

                I bought a copy of the book Richards co-wrote, called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. I highly recommend it. It has helped me look at the Bible in a different way and, living in Uganda, helped me understand some of the deeper differences in culture.  When I have moments of "Huh?" even though we're both speaking English, it's usually because I'm unaware of the currents of thought running below the surface.

                The book begins by addressing more obvious issues such as language and race. The next section skims just below the surface, touching on the differences between collectivism and individualism, the concept of time, and honour/shame vs. right/wrong. (Retelling the story of David and Bathsheba through the lens of an honour/shame culture was very insightful.) The next section goes even deeper, into rules vs. relationships, what we consider to be virtues and vices, and finally how we in the West often perceive ourselves as at the centre of God's will. As the book goes deeper and deeper into "what goes without being said," I realized how near and dear some Western cultural values are to my heart, even if they are Biblically neutral or even contrary to Scripture.

                Some quotes:

                "We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience."

                "The most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said."

                "Church history is a two-thousand-year-long conversation about how the eternal truth of Scripture applies in different cultures at different times."

                [On the Western tendency to ignore Paul's verses praising singleness]: "... what goes without being said amongst Western Christians, especially in America, is that celibacy has no inherent spiritual value . . . Because we privilege marriage as God's preferred way of life for everyone, churches in America, on the whole, do a very poor job of ministering to single adults."

                "The highest goal and virtue in [Western individualist] culture is being true to oneself. The supreme value is on the sovereignty of the individual . . . The highest goal in [collectivist] culture is supporting the community."

                [Interesting note on collectivist culture: Indonesian Christians were shocked to learn that American parents allow their Christian teenagers to go on dates at night unsupervised. "For Indonesians, it seems unfair to leave an individual in a situation in which his or her only real protection is willpower . . . Indonesian Christian teens are relieved that someone else is responsible for protecting them.]

                [On Western tendency to see ourselves at the centre of God's will -- that chapter was hard to read!]: "When we realize that each passage of Scripture is not about me, we begin gradually to see that the true subject matter of the Bible, what the book is really about, is God's redeeming work in Christ. God is restoring all of creation (including me), but I am not at the centre of God's kingdom work. This is a much greater thing to be absorbed with than ourselves ." [Paraphrasing now]: Instead of reading the Bible and asking, "What does this mean to me?" find out what it meant to the original audience and ask, "How does this apply to me?"

                General tips for reading the Bible:  "We are likely misreading when our reading of the text requires us to ignore the context, to shorten the text to just this or that verse or part of a verse. We are likely misreading when our reading of the text requires us to lengthen the text, by pulling in verses from other parts of the Bible until we get all the pieces we need . . . Other times, though, we misread because we read alone. That is, we often hear only the interpretations of people just like us . . . The worldwide church needs to learn to study Scripture together as a global community." 

middle schoolers in heat

We have two pets here in Uganda: Wally the dog and Muwala the cat. Both of these pets need to be neutered or, as Canadians say, "fixed." The task of arranging the vet appointment was clearly on my husband Isaac's to-do list. I tried to avoid being a nagging wife and let it sit on his list. There it sat. And sat. And sat. Now here I sit in Ugandan while he is back in Canada, and the item is now on my to-do list.

Muwala in her younger days ... 

Now, to be fair to him, the man was writing exams and finishing his degree. He did go back to Canada earlier than expected, and only had about 36 hours' notice about his changed flight. He did make a valiant effort to get the animals "fixed" before he left, but the vet wasn't able to come in time.

He left for Canada on Friday. The same day my cat started showing unusual symptoms... I slowly realized that her strange behaviour was not because she missed him but, much to my dismay, because she was in heat.

I've never been around a cat in heat before. As I witness the behavior of a cat in heat (she is my only housemate now, after all) I can't help but think about the middle schoolers I teach and draw comparisons (no offense intended). In many ways, they are "in heat" for the first time in their lives and remind me of my little Muwala, who also finds herself in the midst of hormonal upheaval.

Some similarities between my students and my pet ...

1. Change in appetite. The boys start to eat more, some of the girls start to watch what they eat. In Muwala's case, she has hardly touched her bowl of food for the past few days. This, I read on Google, is normal for a cat.

2. Annoying loud noises. The boys in my classes are loud and rambunctious. The girls giggle much louder than is necessary, "whisper" secrets that can be heard across the room and explode in sudden bursts of laughter. Muwala is yowling. Especially at night. Even after locking her out of my room, I can hear her regular meows. Everyone is trying to get the attention of the opposite sex.

3. Emotionally needy and unpredictable. Google told me that a symptom of a cat being in heat is that they will be "more affectionate than usual." Muwala is a people cat to begin with, but now she is all over me. I can't get any marking done because she sits directly on my papers. She purrs and leans into my petting more than usual. And then, without warning, she'll turn around and swat at me! Oh ... the middle school years and the emotions that are oozing everywhere. I remember my own embarrassing emotional roller coasters and I have witnessed those of my students. Tears, hugs, fights, break-ups, make-ups ... Middle schoolers are emotional. I know this: I read their poetry.

4. Pushing the boundaries and becoming difficult to control. Being a female, Muwala is much more of a priority of being "fixed" than Wally is. Now that she is in heat, I'm trying desperately to keep her indoors and she's trying desperately to get out. Windows are closed despite the equatorial temperatures. I have to slide into the door sideways and push her out of the way with my foot as I do so. She is sniffing around the door frame. In the past week (before I noticed she was in heat) she was wandering further and further away, even going briefly outside the compound walls. (When did she stop being content to hang out close to home?) The connection to middle school is obvious. They want to go to the mall without their parents for the first time. They don't follow the rules as easily. They sometimes talk back. They often have no clue why rules are set, and are often convinced that adults just want to ruin their lives.

5. A little awkward. Middle schoolers are awkward; sometimes their coordination has suffered as their body grows and changes, and socially they don't always know the right thing to say. Let's just say Muwala has been doing awkward things the last few days that make me a little uncomfortable to discuss. On top of that, she's embarrassed me in front of my neighbours on the other side of the duplex -- when I asked this morning if they could hear her yowling at night they hesitated but admitted that yes, yes they could.  *Awkward.*

6. No ability to foresee future consequences. I have explained to my students many times this year that, by no fault of their own, the frontal lobe of their brain has not fully developed. This is why, for good and bad, young people are more likely to take risks and ignore (or have an inability to see) the future consequences for their behaviour. Let's be honest: Muwala wants to get outside for only one thing. She wants to hop over that compound wall and come back pregnant. She can't foresee the difficulty of raising kittens alone, or calculate the vet and food bills that would cost us, or consider the fact that in two weeks I will be leaving her for two months. While Muwala's choices are much more serious than the middle schooler who decides not to study for a test the next day, they are both thinking in the moment.

I read online that cats are in heat for SEVEN to TEN days ... This is going to feel like forever! And isn't that how it felt when I was in the midst of middle school? For. Ever.

*Sigh*

I can't believe how much my middle schoolers have changed over the past year. Students that were shorter than me at the beginning of the year are taller than me, voices have deepened, and -- dare I say -- in many ways they've matured.

And as I look at my little kitty, the furball Isaac pulled out of a gutter on Christmas morning, I can't believe how big she is.

When did they grow up so fast?


[... Can you tell I'm home alone and procrastinating on my final grading? Nothing to do but observe my cat and get sentimental about the end of the year!]

the greatest saints?

"Some of the people we met had nothing, absolutely nothing, but they were so happy," Kimberly said. She extracted a photograph from the crowded back of the piano, of her daughter with two Indian women, their skin dark and weathered, their smiles showing missing teeth. "These women were so wonderful," she said. 

Ifemelu would also come to learn that, for Kimberly, the poor were blameless. Poverty was a gleaming thing; she could not conceive of poor people being vicious or nasty, because their poverty had canonized them, and the greatest saints were the foreign poor.

-- Americanah by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie

I just finished Americanah, probably the longest book I've read for quite some time. I had shown my grade 8 class the Ted Talk by Chimamanda Adichie called "The Danger of the Single Story." (Take 20 minutes and watch it! The best quote: "The trouble with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.") One of my students told her mother about it, who is a big Adichie fan, and since then they've been feeding me Adichie novels one at a time.

I have to say that I enjoyed Purple Hibiscus more  than Americanah. Americanah is the story of a Nigerian woman who moves to America and then back to Nigeria, with a love story woven the whole way through. Americanah was too long for my taste (477 pages!) and I felt that it started to get repetitive after awhile. I also didn't like the fact that the guy in the book leaves his wife to get back together with his one true love when she returns to Nigeria. There were some funny parts in the book when the character Ifemelu first moves to America and experiences culture shock, which I found interesting since it's the flip side of what I've experienced here in Uganda.

One thing Adichie is really good at -- in both of the novels I've read -- is complicating things. In the scene quoted above, when Ifemelu is working in America as a nanny for the wealthy, soft-hearted Kimberly, Adichie complicates the view that many people in the West have of "the greatest saints ... the foreign poor."

The greatest saints.

I have to admit I've been guilty of that. My sister works at an addictions centre in Canada, and I recently said to her, "That kind of urban poverty scares me. It's so complicated. Here in Uganda, it seems more black-and-white: this hardworking woman needs $100 for a sewing machine to start her own small business."

But the longer I'm here, the less I know. Everything gets so complicated, so gray. Sometimes it seems that every way to "help" is analyzed, criticized, and somewhere, someone has a reason why such practices are actually doing harm.

And whether I'm negative or positive about Ugandan culture, up or down, "the Ugandan poor" refuse to fit into the mental boxes I build for them.

There's the woman who tends her shop all day, every day, and makes around $3 profit on a good day. There's the kids who will smile and grab your hand. There's also the kids who swarmed a friend of mine, holding her hands and smiling at her while one kid dipped his hand into her purse. There's the woman who does your laundry, who you know lives in basically a shack the size of a walk-in closet, and she returns the 5000 shillings ($2) she found in your pocket. There's the people who must have watched my neighbour's house, robbing them in broad daylight when the house was left unattended for less than an hour. There's a shopkeeper who takes a microloan and invests it. There's a shopkeeper who takes a microloan and wastes it.There's the Congolese ladies learning English at a nearby shelter who don't know where their families are or whether or not they're alive, and yet they are bright and cheerful and somehow find optimism.

There's the hordes of young men who are jobless and who insist that, if given the chance, they would work hard. There's the night guards who sleep on the job. There's the Ugandan church lady who slips a wrinkled 1000 shilling note (40 cents) into the hand of hospital patient she is praying with. There's the alcoholic sucking waragi out a plastic bag, reeking of alcohol and leering at you. There's the stranger who will take you to the store you're looking for downtown, even if it's far out of his way. There's the person who will unzip the top pocket on your backpack to rob you as you are walking downtown (which happened to Isaac this past week). But then there's also the guy who hissed protectively to Isaac, "Mzungu! You need to take care! You were almost robbed."

Everything's complicated, and why am I surprised? Isn't painting an entire group of people in a positive light still painting them with the same brush? Isn't endowing someone with virtues simply because of their class or skin colour the same as pegging them with negative assumptions (ex: the stereotype of the "noble savage" in Canada).

People are not projects. People are not objects of pity. People are not perfect. People are not predictable. People are people, and people are complicated. (Even poor people in Africa!)

unexpected reminders

Last week was Spring Break. Isaac and I, along with another young Canadian couple, took a five day trip around southern Uganda -- Lake Bunyonyi and hiking Mt. Sabinyo in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park.

Among other money-saving strategies, we took public transit the whole way. We got to the crowded Kampala bus terminal and we were immediately approached by a man with a slight limp who wanted to know where we were going.

"Kabale," we told him.

As happens so many times here, he took our situation upon himself and led us through the winding, confusing bus park to find the bus to Kabale.

"Sabo -- a soda?" he said before we got on the bus. Isaac gave him two 500 shilling coins (about 40 cents total) for a tip.

We paid our 25,000 shilling fee ($10) each  to the conductor and climbed onto the dark, crowded bus. It was already almost filled, which meant that on the bright side we didn't get stuck waiting for the bus to fill (that can take up to two hours) but on the downside most seats were taken. Our friends sat near the front and we made our way to the back.

Although we couldn't find two seats that were together, we did find two seats on the aisle. I found myself sitting beside an older Ugandan woman, with short fuzzy gray hair and poor English. A jaja, a grandmother, as they refer to older women here in Uganda.

At first we thought the TV screen at the front of the bus was a promising sign. We soon realized that, as the bus lurched out of Kampala, we were in for over 6 solid hours of irritating music videos: everything from Dolly Parton to Westlife to Celine Dion to Britney Spears to cheesy locally-made videos with Lugandan lyrics.

As we rode along, I found myself getting lost in the landscape and thinking. Graceful cows' horns seemed to pierce low-slung clouds. The rolling green hills were a relaxing change from Kampala. After feeling so discouraged, so fed-up with aspects of living here the past few weeks, I was happy to feel stirrings of affection for Uganda again.

Strangely, I found myself thinking about my maternal grandmother. Baba, we called her. When my brother-in-law visited Uganda in January, he was reminded of his own children when he saw the children here. While I have thought, "Wow! That boy is the same age as my niece and look at him carrying that water!" I haven't actually seen my niece in the children here. I haven't even seen myself in the young women here, who carry on completely different lives than I do. But for some reason, I saw my Baba here.

I saw my Baba in the way that the woman beside me was travelling alone. I saw my Baba in the way the woman groaned every time the bus bounced us -- sometimes clear into the air -- and held her hip in pain. I saw my Baba in the way she had food carefully wrapped in plastic, the gentle smell of an older person's body odor mingled with the smell of it. I saw my Baba in the way she slightly spilled over into my seat, the way she was embarrassed to have to ask the conductor when the next stop was, she had to use the bathroom.

Strangely, more than anyone else I can see my Baba as a Ugandan. Maybe because she's the most "ethnic" person out of all my close relatives, who knows. But something about the jajas draped in their wraps, squeezing down the aisles of a crowded bus, clucking their tongues at the younger generation, simmering pots of matooke over coal stoves for hours ... It was a strange thing, to be reminded of her here, to be suddenly yearning for her heavy breathing and quirky habits and banana boxes of perogies while bouncing along a road to Kabale.

african rain

I'm pretty sure when I was in Ghana in 2009 I had a blog post with the exact same title. There is something wonderful about rain here, a magic that is new to me.

The rain here is different from the rain in Ghana, at least during the season I was there. Every day the sun rose and the heat swelled until rain broke in the afternoon. People were forced to stop, take shelter, rest, and a rain would softly fall for about half an hour, relieving the heat, and the sky would clear again.

This is the first time I have ever experienced the end of a dry season. For two months the sun crawled across the sky every day, the dust rose off the dirt roads, and there was no cloud cover to soften the sun's searing power. For two months Isaac and I cleaned our outer ears, surprised at the blackened Q-tips. For two months Ugandan men drew sewer water in buckets and tossed it across the streets, trying to keep the insufferable dust in check. The grass got browner and the lawn developed bald patches. It wasn't terrible -- I don't think the weather here is something I can complain about! -- but after two months you realize with a start that it has not rained at all and the world feels quite parched.

Ugandans who have lived here their whole lives can't understand the thrill of that first snowfall in November, or the way Canadians take that first warm spring day as an excuse to wear shorts and sandals. After a long winter, the first time you can emerge from the house without a jacket on is a milestone.

Until now, I have not understood the joy of rain. One night Isaac and I were sitting in the living room and we heard a light pitter patter. We both froze.

"Is that rain?" Isaac said.

"Let's go watch it!" We ran out to the porch to watch the rain.

This past week we had our first rainfall during school hours since before Christmas holidays. My class was totally disrupted. The wind whipped through the windows, shaking the palm leaves outside; the clouds gathered and swirled, thunder rolled. And then the downpour began. Vicious pounding on the tin roof. The leaking tin roof, I was reminded as I watched a puddle form in the middle of the classroom. Students high-fived each other. A grade 6 boy shouted, "Thank God for the rain!" and one senior even slid down the muddy hill on his stomach.

 A friend of ours who works with Samaritan's Purse was telling me about his work in refugee camps in Sudan.

"You're much more excited for the rain when you're hungry or when you're worried about your crop," he said. "I was in a camp one time and it had not rained in 6 months."

I can't even imagine.

Today it drizzled all day. I was comfortable in jeans, a long sleeved shirt, and a light scarf; when I got home, I even wished that I had a pair of slippers! The air smells clean, everything seems washed in brighter green and the grass has already grown. Maybe after a few weeks of the rainy season we'll be done with it, but for now we're all enjoying the rain.

cultural fatigue

Maybe it's because we're nearing the end of third quarter. Maybe it's because Spring Break is just out of reach. Maybe it's because the hot, dry season seems to be dragging on forever. Maybe it's because I'm sick and grumpy.

Whatever the case, the past few days I have not been a very big fan of Uganda.

They -- whoever "they" are -- say that this is part of the process of culture shock. I don't remember the exact steps of culture shock, but I do know what we have experienced. Isaac and I landed in Uganda in August and were hit with immediate shock, feeling completely disoriented. I had never experienced that level of discomfort on a short-term missions trip, or even during my 3 month internship in Ghana. Knowing we were here to live for a year -- knowing we had to reach some state of normalcy here -- made those first few days totally different than someone simply visiting another country for a few weeks.

After the initial shock, I would say that there was the "honeymoon" phase. Everything was interesting. We were determined to learn the local language. I took pictures of every new thing; even the irritations were only funny quirks in our new life here.

Around December, I'd say that I hit a period where my energy started to sag. What was the point of learning Luganda, beyond the greetings I already knew? I felt homesick. My brain was tired of translating things, processing things.

And now I feel that I'm experiencing cultural fatigue. I'm sick and tired of Ugandan culture; everything seems to be wrong. Even as I type that, I correct myself in two ways: 1) I remind myself of the many beautiful things about the culture here, things I would miss if/when we do move back to Canada 2) I remind myself that, unlike Isaac, I for the most part live in a Westernized world that merely brushes Ugandan culture, compared to my full cultural immersion in Ghana.

Even so, here are some things that have irritated me lately:

• Various cases of theft that have happened, major and minor. Someone's house being broken into while they're gone. Someone's backpack -- with a month's salary -- disappearing. Ugandans robbing poor Ugandans, rich Ugandans, rich mzugus. 
• Being told what I want to hear instead of the reality. Me: "When can you be here?" Boda driver: "I'm coming, I'm coming. You will get there on time." Reality: "I'm really far away and you'll be waiting awhile. Oh, and you'll be late." 
• The mini-skirt bill. Apparently this is being looked at again, but it certainly had people talking. The jist of it: wearing a skirt above the knee (even with tights) could result in arrest. Oh, and any Ugandan man above 18 had the right to arrest you -- "civilian arrest", it's called.
• The fact that, as our neighbour quips, "nothing works here except reproductive organs." I never realized that China churns out not just Dollarama-level crap, but a whole other level of crap that gets sent to Africa. Kettles blow up, fans break, lids don't fit on containers, etc. 
• While some people do work very hard, very long hours, seven days a week, many others seem to have a poor work ethic, particularly when they have a steady job with any kind of guarantee. Guards who fall asleep, cashiers who lean on the counter texting on their cell phones, employees that think rain is a valid reason to show up late or leave early, etc. I want to shake people and force them to sit through a customer service training session. This country has a youth unemployment rate of 60 - 80 % depending on who you ask, and yet so many seem to take their jobs for granted. 
• Disgusting stray dogs. Specifically the one that bit me two weeks ago for no apparent reason. 
• Lying in bed and hearing random children crying and screaming as they are being beaten. Tin shacks don't provide a lot of family privacy, I suppose, and now I have a better understanding of why these kids can sit still for so long, help run shops, cook and take care of younger siblings. 
• A friend of mine volunteers regularly at  local orphanage. When an HIV+ baby was almost dying, she and her husband took him in temporarily as foster parents, respecting the legal process of the social workers from the orphanage. His parents -- who, by the way, tried to kill him by throwing him into a latrine -- heard about it and were upset that he was in a mzungu house. They demanded he be returned to the orphanage, because they still have rights. So he was. With his repressed immune system, his health is already suffering. In this country, the idea of temporary foster parenting is foreign; people foster to reach the goal of adoption, otherwise kids languish in understaffed, underfunded and often corrupt orphanages. 
• I spoke to a friend of mine about cultural fatigue today and she told me that she and her husband made a list of things they're tired of running out of here as compared to Canada: Internet, cooking fuel, electricity, air time for cell phones, hot water, drinking water, etc. I ditto that. 
• Rainwater running off into the gutter, where it simmers in the heat and forms a thick soup of garbage, human and animal waste, etc. And then when the road gets too dusty people in this dry season, people get buckets and toss that sewer water onto the road to keep the dust down. Gross. 
• Isaac is also feeling cultural fatigue, understandably as he is the one who is actually enrolled at a Ugandan university full-time -- taking classes, doing assignments, making friends, eating Ugandan food regularly. This week he feels down and generally irritated. Professors coming late, professors not showing up at all, school schedules changing constantly, and chaotic classes sometimes make him feel like he is wasting his time. 
• Ants. In my peanut butter jar, inside my Tupperware container. 
• People burning grass in the field next to us, burning grass in the swamp a short distance away, burning garbage in the field I walk to on my way to work. Why? And can you at least do it when the wind is blowing away from my house?

So there. My rant is done. I'm not trying to paint a negative picture of Uganda (which I realize I just did). I'm trying to be honest about the process of culture shock, about what it feels like to be thinking thoughts you'd never thought you'd think, about being convinced that "my way is better!"

This is not a racial thing -- it's a culture thing. I'm told the next step of culture shock is acceptance and adjustment. I've also been reading some books by a Nigerian author who writes about culture shock going the other way, moving from Africa to the West, which has been beneficial. 

Needless to say, I'm craving Tim Horton's right now.

resting in the shadow of the almighty

Psalm 91 has become a bit of a theme for the teachers at Heritage this year. For some reason sickness has been more rampant than usual; some of the teachers seem to always have somebody in their families who is feeling sick. When the school community was going through a particularly tough time one of the teachers posted on the staff Facebook page that she felt led to pray Psalm 91 over the school. Little did she know, there were also dark spiritual battles going on at that time with a particular student who was later discovered to be deeply involved in Satanism.

This week I return again to Psalm 91. On Sunday evening I was bit by a stray dog, even though I was on the other side of the street and minding my own business. At first it seemed like more of an inconvenience than anything; being bit meant four trips to the clinic across town (over the course of the next month) to get a total of 8 anti-rabies shots. Some people back home reacted with the "Oh, too bad!" attitude that I had myself. People here in Uganda had different reactions.

The next day I got to hear stories of people here who, unable to afford the medication, die of rabies. A staff member showed me scars on his arm from when he was attacked by a rabid dog; thankfully his father had money to get him the medication, but five other people in his village died. As a Westerner, it is always a little startling to bump into something that can't be solved by modern medicine. "Wait? Rabies has no cure and is almost always fatal in humans?" (Now, the vaccines -- given promptly -- are almost 100% effective and the dog that bit me is not rabid for certain.)

Ever since renewing my commitment to regular prayer two weeks ago, I have felt mentally attacked as well. Negative thoughts, beating myself up, nightmares, feeling weary, and having people in my life do or say hurtful things seem to have popped out of nowhere. My old battle with fear and anxiety has risen up again, triggered by dog bites, school stress, and threats of terrorist attacks in Kampala.

So today I opened my Bible, first to Ephesians 6 where I'm reminded that I "wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against ... the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

On my break I turned to Psalm 91 and read it again.

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.[a]
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

3 Surely he will save you
    from the fowler’s snare
    and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
    nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
    and see the punishment of the wicked.

9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

14 “Because he[b] loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
    I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble,
    I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”

It's strange how I used to read Psalm 91 metaphorically, but here in Uganda things like cobras, pestilence, and terrors in the night seem much more real. Our world is broken, and I don't believe that I have a guarantee of living in it unscathed, but I know I have a guarantee of God's peace and salvation. He alone is my refuge and my fortress -- where else can I go?