Book Notes: Running For My Life by Lopez Lomong


running for my life

One more book that was given to me as a gift at the 2012 Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. It is amazing that I picked this book up after struggling last week to preach through the school shooting in Newtown Connecticut. This is a book written by Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys Of  Sudan.

Here is what strikes me and brings me to my knees once again. Lopez shares his story of being ripped from his mothers arms at a church service as a 6-year-old boy in Sudan by rebel soldiers. He was taken to a prison camp where he and hundreds of other boys were taken and forced to live in cramped conditions. It was a shack where there was hardly any room when everybody lay down to sleep at night. It was the place where they slept, ate, and used the bathroom, because there were not allowed outside that one room building for several weeks at a time. Lopez shares that Tuesday was the highlight of their week after a long period of time not being allowed outside the one room shack. On Tuesdays they were allowed to dig through the garbage of their captors and find food scraps to eat and rags to tie together to make soccer balls. Lopez doesn’t say it exactly this way but it was his faith in God and his attitude that saved his life. This is really what the book is all about.

A 6-year-old boy taken from his parents in another Country far away from America. We read about it, we meet some of the boys who have come from there but still most of us are unaffected because it simply isn’t happening to my family or to people in America where we are forced to deal with the tragedy.

Lopez shares his story that is sad and in the end he triumphs because as he says, God was with him all the time. He becomes an American Olympian and has gone on to do great things for others in Sudan in need of help. But the fact remains, this is happening in our world, the world God created and gave us free will. For those who don’t believe there is evil in the world, they obviously haven’t been directly affected by it, it is everywhere.

How can human beings do to other human beings the things recorded in this book? It is as simple as reading the pages of scripture, man has a deep need to call out to God for a total renovation of the heart. Until Christ returns and he will, there will be tragedy like this and until Christ returns, His people have to do all that we can to make the difference in a broken world.

Great book, 5 of 5 stars.

Ronnie

 

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