Capture the scene of the place we visited during Richard's sabbatical this year: A simple brick building, whitewashed walls and 1,000 white teeth smiling at us. The heat was intense yet the building was intended to be airy because each window space had no panes of glass, which in theory allowed the breeze to circulate, except on this day there seemed to be no breeze! This was a church, although to you and I it looks like a cattle barn. At the front of the building was a large lectern, which held the basic loudspeaker system. Three men owned the area -one man led the worship, the other two interpreted from French, into Ewe and then English. The people? They sang their hearts out, praising and thanking God for all He was doing in their lives.

We arrived late - just as our rusting old car swung into the grounds of the church building, a man had been killed and was lying in the road. He was the husband of one of the women in the church; they have two small children.

§ We felt vulnerable
§ We felt compassion
§ We felt helpless
§ In fact …we felt!

As we entered the church we expected to find the congregation mourning, shocked, stunned with horror of a young life being taken away in seconds. But the atmosphere of these people was different. To them death is part of their daily process; they look at it very differently to us. As a Christian community they started to sing, slowly at first and then gathering depth as they hang onto each word, knowing it to be reality in their lives, proved and trusted over the years of meeting death so regularly. The song? 'Count your blessings, name them one by one'… an echo of a song sung many years ago in our English churches, but to them it expressed their blessings given by God as He gave to them food and shelter on a daily basis - but more than that it's a song which expresses their eternal hope in God. They are a people who live with a vision of their future - post death, when sickness and poverty is ended and they live with God in heaven - healed, and restored, from all of the struggles of their lives. Their hope is in their eternity, not in their present, so they can be happy at death, because they believe it to be better than their present life.

This Christmas churches will be using the Christmas story in their Carol services all around the world. One verse they will be focusing on is 'Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation (Luke 2:29-31). It's Simeon's words - around when Jesus was a young baby. We often call his words the Nunc Dimitis. Since our visit to Togo, West Africa (Situated between Ghana and Benin - underneath Burkina Faso), we have thought a lot about Simeon's words. Concentrate on that last phrase - 'my eyes have seen your salvation'. Note the tense of the verb - 'have seen'. Not 'will see'; not 'hope to see at some time in the dim future'. 'My eyes have seen your salvation'.

The experience we had in Togo has changed our lives - the third world made us see the barriers of the western world in its materialism, and its spiritual loss, but in the third world they have the richness of their spiritual wealth. Perhaps we have lost spiritual depth, it being masked by our material wealth. However, it begs the question of who is right. We hope the man who died in Togo asked the question before he was killed.

Richard and Sue Owen

Click For Larger Image

Click For Larger Image