YESTERDAY'S WHISPERS

“Where are all the villagers?” I asked.

“They left,” Nick said. “A man was killed by a lion and it is a bad omen to stay in a village where that happened.”

I stared at the eerie scene and tried to picture a man being dragged away from these grass huts by a lion. Did he scream? Did the lion enter his hut? It would have been easy. There were no doors and the huts were smaller than most backyard sheds back home. I could not even imagine it.

There were ten to twelve huts in all built by straw and sticks and placed with a fifteen to twenty yard radius between them. They were the color of bare oak trees in winter. We had seen three other similar villages that week. All of them were active with singing and smiling and running children who rushed toward us and were so grateful for a simple piece of candy and the meat our hunting would supply to them. Some of the women stared at us with what appeared distrust, but most smiled and waved. The trackers and skinners and other camp staff, men I had come to respect and trust in a short few days, lived in these villages. But not that one. An emptiness you could almost grasp but never understand filled that place.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

Nick spoke briefly with the trackers for a few moments, then turned and looked back toward the village. “This was a very tragic story,” he said. “The villagers have very few possessions and are always prepared to leave at a moments notice. But this man who was killed was married and his wife was then considered cursed as well. She was not allowed to go with the villagers. She stayed in her husband's hut and the lion came back.” Nick’s voice wavered. He had been a hard man. He had fought in the Rhodesian War and had lost more than he could bring himself to discuss but he had a genuine love for the Zambia he now called home and the people who lived there.

“So that’s it?" I asked. "A man is killed by a lion and then his wife is condemned to the same fate?”

“The authorities were eventually informed, but it is a twenty-five hour drive to here from the nearest town. They sent out a truck full of men with machine guns who killed a few lions and called it taken care of. The whole thing is tragic." Nick paused for a moment before adding, "It is Africa.”

That scene had taken place during my first trip to Africa fifteen years ago. I had gone there as a hunter and to have an adventure. I had been even more naïve about the world than I am now. We left that abandoned village and I continued on with that unmatched adventure. I did not even say a prayer that day. And it would be quite some time before I would even try to hear God beyond the thoughts of me. I was not even asking the difficult questions about suffering and love. 

I experienced some truly amazing things in Zambia during those three weeks and I remember them all, but as I sit here it is that moment, when I was staring at dust blowing ghost stories through a place time had not invaded that seems most imprinted in my thoughts these fifteen years later. I did not know it then, but God was speaking to me. I do not pretend to know what He was saying, but I believe a part of it was—“Wake up! Listen. You are not the center of the world."

Maybe now He is reminding me that He has always been there whispering and waiting for me to recognize His voice. Maybe someday I will understand better the message of the whispers permeating all the moments of our lives: "I Am here. You are loved and it will be okay."

Why are we so afraid to listen?