Several weeks ago I shared the wonderful story of Kamate Takoudjou, the seven-year old boy from the Cameroon in West Africa who had lost sight in one eye due to an injury to his cornea and subsequent scar tissue that was causing the blindness.

You may remember how God brought together friends known and unknown, brothers and sisters in Christ, to allow Kamate to undergo the complicated transplant surgery he needed. From the Cameroon to Kenya, from the Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia to Langhorne Presbyterian Church, God was at work for his good purposes.

We thank God for the faithfulness of parents and friends, physicians and church members, medical technology and a mission budget, all of which made Kamate’s surgery possible.  Mostly, though, we thank God for his amazing grace.

Recently we received an update from Kamate’s parents, Gabriel and Jeanine, on his recovery.  They write:

Beloved in the Lord,

Warm greetings in Jesus’ Name from Yaounde.

Our last son, Kamate Junior, age 7 years old, had an eye surgery for cornea transplantation at Tenwek Missionary Hospital in Kenya on Sept 21, 2011 by Dr. Ben Roberts. Dr. Ben did a wonderful job and the surgery was successful. We thank God for all his help while we were at Tenwek. We also thank God for the healing process of Kamate. It’s going to be a very long post operation process. Kamate says that he has started seeing some colors and some objects. He is not feeling pain anymore, but yesterday he was complaining of headache. He went back to school last Monday. But he has to see an ophthalmologist once a week for three months and once a month for one year. We pray that his body should not reject the new cornea he received.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. Let us continue to intercede for his complete healing

Shalom,
Gabriel et Jeanine Takoudjou
(the photo shows Kamate’s eye as it continues to heal)

This week’s events at State College are a sad reminder that we live in a world where the precious, God-beloved lives of too many are not counted as worthy of an unrelenting battle to assure their protection, safety and dignity. Joe Paterno’s words, “I should have done more,” are an indictment against us all. “We should have done more” forms the bitter epitaph chiseled into the grand monument of human progress and technology. We’ve all been too busy with our own comfort and success, our gadgets and recreation, to have done more for the least of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.  Not just in faraway places.

The story of Kamate Junior Takoudjou and his parents Gabriel and Jeanine, of Drs. Ben Roberts and John Cropsey, Sadeer and Monica Hannush, Joe and Marilyn Franzi, Kamate and Kavira Basolene, Tenwek Hospital and Langhorne Presbyterian Church, is a story of God at work in through and among us doing “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 5:20-21). We need to hear – and participate in – stories such as this.

My guess is that to a person those who are being used in Kamate’s healing are the kind of people who are always wondering if they might do more. They are the sorts who ask, “’Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

I borrow part of a scene in a picture Jesus paints. The master returns from a long journey and asks for an accounting of those things over which his servants were made stewards. One returns the one talent entrusted to his care, and sheepishly acknowledges, “I should have done more.” The master calls the man a foolish servant and casts him out into utter darkness. The other servants come forward with the talents they were given and those they have earned in the master’s absence. Each of them also says, “I should have done more.” But they say so humbly, not sheepishly.  And the master says to them, “Well done, good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of your master.” (see Matthew 25:14-30)

Pray that we live our lives in such a way that we not be haunted by the knowledge that we should have done more – nor ever in so arrogant a manner that we think we always did all we should have done. Pray that we live lives open to the one who always does far more than all that we ask or think.