Yes There is Hope

Yes, There is Hope – Even for Sarajevo

Recently I had the privilege of returning to the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia, where I lived for two years as a missionary before coming to ChristChurch in August of last year.  While I was quite happy to go – visiting Sarajevo meant seeing my old home, my old friends, and my fiancé, who is due to come home in a few days – I couldn’t help feeling anxious as well.  How would I be received?  Or, more to the point, how would I receive this place that had been my home so recently, where I had experienced so many ups and downs?  

Soon after I arrived, I easily fell back into my old routines.  In almost no time, I was walking down the city’s famed walking street, an old friend on either side of me, and the tinkering sounds of little teacups and saucers at outdoor cafes all around me.  I went to eat with students again, enjoying the Bosnian cuisine that I once ate so often.  For me, the mere routines of life here were in many ways a welcomed change.  

Then I began to once again talk to students about spiritual things, and I received a much more significant reminder of what my life and work had been like in Sarajevo.  As our team assisted and encouraged the long-term team there, which I had been a part of until I came to ChristChurch, I once again was reminded of the outlook on life that many Bosnians share.  Theirs has been a very difficult life over the past ten years.  A devastating war for independence left the country depleted, and even ten years later, students are still hopelessly pessimistic about the future.  Ethnic quarrels have buried the city and the country in strife and averted hopes for progress.  Unemployment still hovers at 40 percent, and war criminals still roam the countryside, mysteriously unable to be found.  

Most students think that the vast religious differences that exist in their country were the cause of the wars, and therefore attempt to keep any real discussion of God or religion at a good arm’s length  They claim that it’s just not relevant to life here.  Missionaries know different, but communicating truth is seldom easy in such a setting.  Those in Sarajevo who truly know Christ know that the gospel is the only thing that will ever bring an end to the ethnic struggles that have plagued their land.  Only the love of Christ and the forgiveness that He enables will bring lasting peace and progress.  And that is the vision for sharing the gospel in this, the last reach country in all of Europe.  Indeed, in Bosnia, a country of over 4 million, less than a thousand know Christ personally.  In Sarajevo, a city of half a million, less than 300 have ever met Him.  

Still, there is the undeniable truth that God is working.  He is not less powerful, just because there are mosques and minarets on the hillsides instead of churches and steeples.  In one conversation that I had with a student that I had met only a few days earlier, the student told me that, because of all the hard things that had happened to Bosnians over the past ten years, it made perfect sense to him to come to Bosnia and talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  He said that if more people would live according to a relationship with Jesus, things in this country would start to change.  This student was not a believer, and yet he could see the goodness of Jesus within a personal relationship.  

On my journey back to Atlanta, I was deeply impressed with the fact that God’s church is universal, and that His work here in Atlanta is inseparable from his work around the world.  We are bound together with Christians all around the world, of all different denominations, races, and languages, by the same God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  And He is always working.  He gives us the privilege of coming along for the ride, but it is He that sets the course, and He that gets the victory.  What a vision to have, that we will one day witness Christ, as He brings His kingdom to earth, even here – even among the mosques and minarets of Sarajevo.