Redeeming Love.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. (John 15:13)

The moment I saw Josh walk through the gate, I knew there was something terribly wrong. It did not take him more than five steps before breaking down in tears , proving my suspicion right. I had to run to support him from his staggering walk. As awkward as it felt at first, I found myself providing a shoulder for him to cry on.

African men are not supposed to cry, but Josh was no typical man. He had his stack of stories for his atypical life. Even then, it was the first time to see him cry and I could only try and fill up for myself what could have happened – he just kept mumbling words in the line of, “ndugu yangu, kwa nini haya? (my brother, why these?)”

With little expertise in comforting crying men, I allowed my Josh to cry and sob, as much as he needed to before asking the details of what had happened. The last time we had spoken was the previous day and I knew he was on night shift at work, so I thought it had to be something to do with how he found his family when he came back in the morning.

As it turned out, his boss had later in the evening given him permission to be off-duty from work, and he had decided not to wait till morning to go home. As late as it was, he decided to pick a bike home and spend the night there as he could sleep-in the following morning as a well deserved rest from the busy week.

He was however not prepared for what he found at home. While his children were fast asleep, his wife was not at home. “Where could she be?” , Josh wondered.

True to his latest characteristic of exercising himself on listening to the guidance of the inner voice, he started to walk out of his compound to some blocks around the neighborhood. It was like a voice telling him turn there, walk to the left, forward, and then right, until he found some three people in a distance by the side walk.

As he approached them, he could not figure out the faces in the dimly lit walkway, but the voices were becoming discernable. To his amazement on one hand, and the accuracy of the inner voice guidance on the other hand, one of the voice was that of his wife, and her position in relation to one of the men was less than one would expect of a married woman.

“What are you doing with my wife here at this hour?” Josh paused, but before an answer could be given, two blows had landed, one on the man, and another on the wife. As Josh was narrating this, he was also saying, “God will forgive me.”

Long story short, what followed after that was a very intense season of seeking the Lord for guidance on what to do going forward in the backdrop of that magnitude of betrayal. I must admit that at that point I felt inadequate to advise him on what to do.

I could only encourage him to do what I had told him a couple of times before, “let the Lord show you what to do”. I know it is supposed to be good advise, but somehow that time it felt inadequate. At the back of my mind the story of Hosea and Gomer appeared.

Fast forward to when we were catching up recently, almost an year after that incidence. It was as if the series of events were five years compressed into those intervening months. After wrestling with a decision on how to move forward, he had forgiven his wife and decided to give her a chance to change her ways.

This may have been the best decision according to Josh, but did not go well with those around him. He had made the decision and kept it between his God, his wife and the men, and himself, but as the saying goes, “no secret between three”, and somehow the information found its way to the parents and siblings.

His own family demanded that the wife goes back to her parents home until they go for her. He on his part obliged as his position was, “anything that will bring peace and unity at home.” It however turned out that there was no intention to go for her, but rather to do away with her. He was told that if he went for her, he’d have to leave the family home and join his wife anywhere , but in that compound. According to them, he was bringing disrepute to their respectable family, and was weak in not being able to control and manage his wife.

In all this, he maintained his position that, it is true his wife had done wrong, but he had forgiven her, and that to him it was simply because he loves her. As he shared these things, he said something that I thought quite profound. He said, “all these I cannot do it on my own, I cannot do it. It is God that has enabled me.” I’ve thought about that since, and how true it is. Further I started seeing the picture of Christ and His bride in Josh’s Story:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness,” Jeremiah 31:3.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” Eph 5:25.

“He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him.” 1Thes 5:10.

As I write this, Josh is together with his bride, who is simply smitten by her husbands love, even as everyone around him has advocated for their going separate ways.

“Love never fails”