In the book of Acts of the Apostles, chapter 8, verses 26-39, Luke tells an interesting story about the miraculous meeting of two very different people. One was Philip, an early believer who spent his days preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, and delivering folks from evil spirits in the name of Jesus. The other was an unnamed Ethiopian eunuch, an official in the government of Queen Candace of Ethiopia. In fact, he was in charge of all the treasury.

Now it happened one day that an angel came to Philip and told him to go south to the desert road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza. So he went. At the same time, the Ethiopian eunuch was making his way home from Jerusalem on that very same road. Apparently, he had been in Jerusalem worshiping at the Temple. While there, he somehow secured reading material for the trip home, a copy of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and he was reading it aloud.

The Spirit, Luke says, told Philip to get up close to that Ethiopian’s chariot and, when he did, he overheard the Ethiopian reading one of the many passages in Isaiah that describe the coming Christ.

Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

He replied, “How can I unless someone explains it to me?”

Beginning with that passage in Isaiah, Philip told him the good news of Jesus the Christ. The Ethiopian believed, asked to be baptized, and, as soon as that was accomplished, Philip disappeared. Luke says that “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away” and that the Ethiopian eunuch “went on his way rejoicing”.

Remember the Ethiopian eunuch. His story tells us three important things about God-

• That God is very interested in the hearts of the people of Ethiopia
• That God places people around the world with hearts to obey His voice
• That God can put these hearts together, sometimes in miraculous ways

It is so easy to fall into the trap of defining a country by its problems, or even by the solutions to its problems. To be sure, Ethiopia, like every other country on the globe, has to grapple with many serious issues, but Ethiopia should not be defined as a “country full of problems”. It is a country full of people, each person a unique individual created in the image of God.

I began thinking about this after reading the following passage quoted from C. S. Lewis’ book, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader“, in which the boy Eustace has this conversation with Ramandu, a star in the form of a human-

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”

Just as a twinkling star in the darkness is so much more than “a huge ball of flaming gas”, there is so much more to Ethiopia than poverty, hunger, and disease. Ethiopia is people, very interesting and diverse people. It is people with a long history of seeking God and finding Him.

Remember the Ethiopian eunuch…

One of the catchy little phrases that Ezra Rural Ministry folks in the USA have developed is “Ethiopians Evangelizing Ethiopians-It Just Makes Sense”. It is a phrase that sums up the reason why we are willing to put our money, effort, and time into this unique ministry half a world away.

In the past, in an older missions mentality, we would have spent years teaching an American couple the language and customs of an arbitrarily chosen indigenous group in Ethiopia. We would have drummed up enough support to get this couple to Ethiopia and to live there for several years, waiting for them to be accepted by the people they came to evangelize, and hoping that they would make an impact.

Ezra Rural Ministry, in a newer missions mentality, supports Ethiopians as they train other Ethiopians to evangelize. The training is developed by Ethiopians, in their own language and at minimal cost. The Ezra Rural Ministry graduates return home to evangelize their own people, in their own villages, where many of them have lived for generations. 

It just makes sense.