Week II • Friday
Sudan
Week II • Friday
Voices from the Landscape
“We have had training for a week on Bible based trauma healing. In this region we have suffered Civil War for about twenty years. The brutalisation of the rebels and then of the national army were both very serious.
The whole population of this region had to live in Internally Displaced People Camps for at least fifteen years. We lost connection to our land, to our self sustaining lives, we lost our cattle.
Whilst training as a lay reader we have had a week of teaching from the Bible Society on Bible Based trauma healing. We were given time and space to consider where we are still living with pain and with unforgiveness.
We were given time to pray with a friend and take our pain to the cross. We remembered that Christ suffered for us and with us, that Jesus knows our suffering from the inside.
Now I can go forward without carrying the burdens of unforgiveness which was eating me up from inside.
I praise God who sets us free from the past and invites us into the future with God’s grace.”
From a Lay Reader
wonderings
- I wonder what it would feel like to hear my own story named truthfully, not to condemn but to set me free.
- I wonder what living water might flow if enemies and strangers dared to meet and speak in the heat of the day.
Reflection
Hearing this testimony through the eyes of African theology – and especially through the wisdom of Archbishop Desmond Tutu – we are reminded that healing is always communal. Tutu taught that in African spirituality, wounds are never borne by an individual alone; suffering rests on the whole community because a person is a person through other people. Trauma, therefore, is not only personal but relational. And so is healing.
The lay reader’s story of civil war, displacement, and loss echoes what Tutu called “the woundedness of the whole body.” When a people are torn from their land, their cattle, their homes, their name and place in creation are torn as well. Identity fractures. The umuntu, the person-in-community, is shaken at the roots. African theologians like Tutu and Emmanuel Katongole insist that true healing does not begin with forgetting, nor with private suppression, but with telling the truth in the presence of God – and in the presence of one another.
This Bible-based trauma healing workshop became just such a sacred space: a place to name pain honestly, to bring it to the cross, and to remember that Christ suffers not only for us but with us. Tutu often said that God’s tears mingle with ours; the cross reveals the divine willingness to inhabit human wounds.
Forgiveness, in this African vision, is not denial of harm nor cheap reconciliation. It is the slow unbinding of the heart, the restoration of dignity, the reclaiming of humanity. It is stepping into the future without being chained to the past.
This testimony becomes a sign of resurrection: a movement from bitterness to freedom, from captivity to grace – a reminder that healing the individual is always part of healing the whole community.
prayer
Prayer at the Cross:
Almighty God, whose nature is
always to have mercy,
lead us again to the foot
of the cross where you take up
our pain and exchange it
for joy, you take our ashes
and give us new clothes.
bible reading
John 3:1–21:
Nicodemus by Night
Nicodemus’ night-time encounter with Jesus is a profound pastoral conversation. It’s an encounter across boundaries of status, culture, and spiritual understanding. Here, an established religious leader steps out of his comfort zone, seeking meaning in the dark. This is a space where transformation begins not through authority or certainty, but through vulnerability and listening . An intercultural pastoral encounter
From the work the theologianEmmanuel Lartey, in his book In Living Color , Nicodemus could be seen to represent those of us formed by rigid systems, religious, cultural, or social, who long for renewal yet struggle to imagine it. From this perspective Jesus, speaking of birth “from above,” and us into a process of re-learning how to see, much like moving from one cultural lens to another. It is not about abandoning one’s identity but allowing the Spirit, that divine breath that crosses all boundaries, to open new ways of perceiving life.
This story illuminates how transformation happens in dialogue, in speaking and listening to one another . Jesus meets Nicodemus where he is, using his own language and metaphors, yet at the same time gently stretches him toward something larger. This is pastoral care at its best: an intercultural exchange that honours the seeker’s context while revealing the depth of divine possibility.
The movement from darkness to light, Nicodemus coming in the darkness to meeting Jesus the light of the world, is a metaphor of restorative healing. In many cultures, the night is not simply the absence of light but a space for gestation, reflection, and rebirth. Nicodemus’ coming “by night” could thus symbolise the hidden beginnings of a journey toward illumination. It’s a kind of slow, interior transformation that pastoral care and Spiritual Direction or accompaniment often nurtures.
This reading remind us that Jesus’ words about love and new birth are not only personal but social, for the whole community and world. The Spirit who blows where it will invites whole communities into renewal – moving beyond fear and division toward shared dignity, justice, and compassion.
reflective action
Speak or write a word of mercy – for yourself or for another.
It may be a note of compassion, a moment of listening, a small act of release.
Let the action be your participation in the healing of the wider body.
journalling prompt
Imagine you are standing at the foot of the cross with this African community – IDP camps behind you, hope before you, Christ beside you.
What burden do you place down at the cross today?
What word, colour, image, or gesture symbolises the healing you long for?
Let your imagination and your pen move gently, as if Christ were receiving every word.
