It was inescapable. Dirt, dust, grime, mud … under my fingernails, in my food, lining every surface of my home, cemented into my pores. A heavy rain did nothing to clear the air. Instead, each drop that slapped the dry earth threw up yet another cloud of dust. It was a bit like trying to breath through a Hoover bag. My whites quickly succumbed to the more dominant grey tones of the dirt around me and eventually every one of my electrical appliances submitted its spirit to the dust that it had inhaled. Within weeks of arriving in Afghanistan I had already compiled a disturbingly long list of words in Dari for dust – this one for when it’s dry, this one for when its wet, this one for when its in the air. It seemed dust was the Afghan equivalent of the Eskimo’s snow, which occupied such a prominent space in the life of its average citizen that the language had grown to accommodate the varied and many conversations that were inevitably had about it.
Two and a half years after my arrival in Kabul, it was a different grime against which I struggled: The security had worsened and death became a palpable daily reality I could not escape. I recall longing to scrub myself clean of it, feeling that it had clogged my pours and chocked my chest. There had been too many mornings woken by the ominous low rumble or loud crack of a bomb followed by reports of ever-increasing casualty numbers over morning coffee. There were too many amputees, scooting themselves on rolling platforms between cars, begging for alms. There were too many orphaned little ones and too many childless mothers.
This April marks two years since I left Afghanistan – a country I had grown to deeply love even as, emotionally and spiritually, I suffered its wounds. In the months before my departure, I had only one prayer left to lift to God: “Where is your hope, Lord? I cannot see it!”
The word ‘hope’ when used in our Biblical texts holds nothing of the English word’s connotation of wishful thinking. Instead, it is a certain expectation of something not yet seen, but confidently anticipated. This Easter we remember the substance of that hope – that the love of an Almighty God compelled Him to take on our human flesh and subject his immortal self to death, but that death could not hold Him! As Christ rose, He ushered in a New Kingdom in which death has no place. It is the installation of that Kingdom on Earth for which we pray and long and work – and hope! The whole of the human story is marked by this process and promise of restoration.
As Christians, I am struck that our politics are too seldom defined by that hope. With elections approaching, questions regarding the UK’s foreign policy and development agenda abound, particularly as they relate to our engagement with conflict-afflicted regions of the world. When we, with our politicians, ask these questions, how often do our responses reflect a consideration of the first question: “Where is your hope, Lord?”
Our Christian hope should not just describe some future reality; it should transform our present activity. Our Christian hope reminds us that we are not only agents of restoration, but also recipients of that restoration. It checks our desire to vanquish our enemy and asks us to kneel down, take a cloth and wash his feet. Brothers and sisters, in this Easter election season, let us hope in the Lord and find that we and this world are restored from death to life!
Katrina Aitken
