Deeply Okufaayo

A while back, I returned to my old home town of Govan in Glasgow. Part of the journey was historical, I wanted to stand again among the ancient Govan Stones in the old church, but part of it was something more inward. I was walking through a place where the familiar still breathed beneath the surface, even as the modern world pressed in around it.

While I was there, I met the minister, his wife and fellow sister from Govan Free Church. In the course of conversation, I mentioned my recent cancer diagnosis. Later, by what some would call coincidence, though I’ve never been convinced that the word is large enough as I learned that at their prayer meeting, they had prayed for me.

That touched me more deeply than I expected.

Not long after, my wife met up with a Ugandan friend she keeps in touch with, now living in Nashville. When this friend heard about my illness, she contacted her congregation in the United States and asked them to pray for me as well.

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you’ll know I’m drawn to words that resist neat translation — words that reveal something luminous about what it means to be human. That is how I came across the Luganda word okufaayo.

It is not simply “I’m sorry to hear that”. It is not a polite message or a passing expression of sympathy. Okufaayo carries the sense of caring enough to give attention; of letting another person’s trouble matter to you.

That is what my wife’s friend did. She heard about my cancer and allowed it to enter her heart. She carried my name across distance — from a conversation in one place to a congregation in another. Her concern did not remain a feeling. It became prayer. It became action. It became community.

There is something profoundly beautiful in that. My suffering did not remain private information to her. It became a reason to gather others before God. In a quiet but powerful way, she refused to let me face it alone.

And for me, the Christian layer makes this even more resonant. It echoes the mystery of the body of Christ: when one member suffers, the others respond; when one part is wounded, another part prays. Through her compassion, my illness became a shared spiritual burden; not lessened, but held.

Okufaayo reminds me that real love does not stay still. It moves. It crosses borders, gathers people, and carries names before God. And sometimes, in the midst of fear and uncertainty, it is this kind of love that steadies the soul. Paul knew this love,

“The brothers there had heard about us and travelled as far as the Forum of Appius

and the Three Taverns to meet us.

When Paul saw them, he was encouraged and gave thanks to God.”

Acts 28:15

Footnote

Horace mentions Appii Forum in Satires 1.5, describing it as crowded with boatmen and miserly innkeepers, and noting that the marshland’s gnats and frogs disturbed the travellers’ sleep. Time gives vivid historical colour to Acts 28:15, where believers came from Rome to meet Paul at the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns. Appii Forum lay about 43 Roman miles from Rome, while Three Taverns was about 33 Roman miles from Rome, roughly ten miles nearer the city. Roman miles” were a little shorter than modern English miles, which is why sources may say 43 Roman miles but also about 39–40 modern miles.