CURE Afghanistan in March 2012. There's a lot of snow on the ground.

A Primer on CURE Afghanistan

In 2005, CURE took responsibility for a hospital complex on Darulaman Road in Kabul, Afghanistan. As with all CURE hospitals, we brought in skilled and experienced western ex-pats to work alongside of national professionals – bolstering the skills, training, and standards of the hospital.

This past week, I was privileged to visit that hospital. Led by a mixture of ex-pat and national professionals, CURE Afghanistan employs hundreds of doctors, nurses, and staff and serves the needs of thousands of pregnant mothers, premature babies, and women and children with surgically treatable conditions. As is the case throughout CURE, many of our Afghan doctors are national leaders in their respective specialty, sacrificing safety and material opportunity to serve their people with an excellence and reputation that is unrivaled. It is truly an honor for me to call them colleagues.

Afghanistan is not what it seems on the news. It is a hard place to serve and a difficult place to live; but the Afghan people are warm and hospitable, and it is clear that the CURE hospital is making a huge difference in a country that is still very broken after years of totalitarian rule and continued tribal warfare.

As I reflect on CURE’s mission in Afghanistan, one question has occupied my thoughts:

What does “healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God” look like in Afghanistan?

To answer that question, I was drawn to an example Jesus gave his disciples about the nature of the kingdom of God. Jesus used a common phrase and an uncommon circumstance to describe the overwhelming influence that the kingdom of God – this present and yet coming kingdom, this redemptive work by God to renew His Creation – has on everything it touches.
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