The Chinaman & Attendant Lessons

I’ll wager you one that if the Chinese upped and left today, we would have absolutely no idea what to do with the gazillion roads they’re in the process of constructing. Sometimes, when I find myself stuck in those China-induced jams (with a huge ‘we apologize for any inconvenience’ sign blocking my view), I try to figure it out. It’s a gargantuan headache.

They are a trying part, really, those jams. Add to that the dust and the crazy driving now enhanced by lack of space, and you have yourself a daily Beirut-like road experience. Somehow, when I saw those beautiful pictures of the “superhighway” with its crisscrossing lanes and beautiful flyovers and unreal grass, it didn’t quite conjure in my mind what Nairobi has now become.

I was thinking about all this recently, while being elbowed off the road by matatus, whose drivers of course care less about the fact that there’s no pedestrian strip on that side of University way. I realized that I simply don’t like process. I suppose none of us men do, but I have a particular apathy for the ones filled with pell-mell-confusion, unclear, misty at best-I much prefer things I can understand, and that are over in a hurry.

The Chinese say they’ll be done by 2015 (gasp!), and then we’ll see the full picture. Someone help me.

My life isn’t doing much better either. Half the time I can’t see through the cloud of dust, I don’t understand where which road is leading, and I wonder why the traffic only gets thicker. Other times, I question whether I’ve lost the way, whether my blueprints have been written in Mandarin and therefore no one can read them, and I wonder what would happen if I, figuratively speaking, jumped off the bus.

I’ll tell you something else that doesn’t help. My mind. Always in high gear, thinking, reasoning, drawing rational conclusions and working out simultaneous possibilities. Result? A rather frustrated process. I want to have all the answers, I want situations to make sense, I want my roads to be straight-forward, with signs at appropriate places and no potholes, thank you.

 But these Chinese and their superhighway, they’ve given me a lesson. At the beginning, they showed us a picture, an artist’s impression of our finished roads. I suppose they expect that anytime you’re driven to complain about how the process is going, or you’re puzzled by how the bypass is meandering, you’ll remember. Remember that they know what they’re doing, and somehow, we’ll get our beautiful roads in the end.

God too, He’s like the Chinaman. He shows us a picture of where we’re going, mostly just once, and often when we’re younger. Then He gets to work on getting us there. And when the journey gets frustrating, and things are not making sense, and boy, it looks like someone lost The Plan, He hopes that we will remember. Remember all that He said, the picture He has shown us of the end, the promise He has given. Think Abraham, on his way to sacrificing Isaac; think Joseph, in prison for years, wondering whether his dreams were just delusions of grandeur; think George…

Can’t speak for the Chinese, but God, He knows what He’s doing. And it ALL comes out beautifully in the end, just like He said it would, and in exact detail too. No matter how twisted, confused and impossible it may look at whatever point in the journey, every promise that He makes, He will accomplish, because He said it. He’s able. Remember, be sure of, and rest in that.

Fear Magnifies Fearsome Objects

My house is like a huge underground zoo – you know, the kind you saw on antz or a bug’s life. I share it with all sorts of living creatures, led by colonies of ants and their attendant uncles. In the last day alone, I’ve dispatched to their maker a flame-red cockroach, a rather obese safari ant, a cricket, grasshopper and some other flying creature I can’t find in the encyclopedia of crawling things. I suspect it’s punishment for my rather violent dislike for all things crawling.

But of all these visitors, the ones who are fronting a real challenge for residence are the ants. They come in their thousands and pop up out of every imaginable crevice. And, they don’t die. On the contrary, the more you sweep them away, the more they bring forth. I wonder what their newspapers look like – they must have about a million pages worth of obituaries every day. It is absolutely frustrating, yet I can’t help but admire their tenacity. Sometimes, I’m even tempted to let them be, and find a way for us to live together.

Like with the ants, the devil and I have come a long way. From the days when I didn’t even know he existed, to the days when I changed sides and the duels began. Thereafter, it’s been a see-saw. I sweep him out, he comes back in. Sometimes he disappears for a while, only to come back better suited, and with a battalion. Other times, when things get really bad and the insecticide isn’t working, I’m tempted to let him be. Then I remember that statement that I have been taught and come to learn, that what you allow you eventually accept.

So instead, I’ve become a student of the art of war. I have refused to be ignorant of his wily devices. Ants, by the way, use numbers to intimidate. The devil, he has quite an impressive arsenal. I’m unraveling it item by item. Someday, I’ll be pretty good at knowing how to knock out everything he can dish out. Recently though, I’ve been learning about the one he used to fell the Israelites and prevent them from getting into Canaan. It’s called discouragement.

My pastor recently commented that if the deceiver could only have one weapon, it would be discouragement. With most of us, he doesn’t have to do much to get us into a place of hopelessness at the tasks that lay before us – all he has to do is blow up a few things, exaggerate our vision of horror and we’re done for.

Those Israelite men, they decided that they were grasshoppers, and the giants who lived in the big city with walls up to the sky (sounds ridiculous, right?) would maul them. And that was it – we are told only Joshua and Caleb made it. I understand, because I’m the kind of guy who can talk himself into a bout of depressive fits at the smallest of molehills.

I’m also the guy who’s understood the lesson that discouragement is not just an emotion to get over, it’s the devil fighting to stop me from moving. So I’m buffeting my anti-discouragement shield, made of the words of God to me – fear not; be strong and of good courage. I’m taking my pastor’s advice and turning my tribulations into triumphs, failures into fortunes, setbacks into successes, obstacles into opportunities and my burdens into blessings.

As for the ants and bugs, I continue to sweep them out without fear or favor. A day cometh when they will be no more and I will have won!

Desperation

It’s a bad thing to be desperate. You come off as weak, dependent, couldn’t find another option. You are probably hopeless, and in your eyes, only the one you’re desperate for can help you. If he/she doesn’t, you’re done for. It’s a bad thing to be desperate.

Say, peradventure, that you’ve had a blood disease for twelve years. You’ve spent millions and many haranguing moments at the hands of doctors and relatives who call you cursed. You’ve been locked up in your house, and are condemned to solitary walks, because no one wants to get near you. What if then, on one warm afternoon, you hear shouts in the streets, and a rumor that a great man of healing is in the vicinity.

Do you see now, the need for the desperation? You lock your doors and gather your skirts, and run after the crowd. Of course, you know that it’s unlikely you’ll even get to the great man. But you have this wild notion in your mind, that maybe if you could just touch the hem of his clothing, you’ll be healed. It’s stupid yes, but desperation often is. You know that if they were to notice you and realize what disease you have, you’ll be stoned to death. But then again, you might just get there before they catch you, right?

So you press on, dart through the spaces in the swelling crowd. You can see the great man’s hair now, so you know you’re close. You press a bit further, and then with all the energy you have left, you reach out and touch the trails of his skirt. It’s blinding, the realization that the bleeding has stopped. But before you can soak it in, the crowd stops and turns in your direction. Oh no, someone recognized you, but how? Then you see the great man walk toward you and ask whether you touched him. There’s compassion in his eyes as you tearfully tremble and nod.

“Daughter”, Luke reports the great man as saying, “your faith has made you well, go in peace”. He might just as well have said, your desperation has made you well – He knew.

Or perhaps you’re a man thirty plus years of age. You live a sorry life, blind, the town’s street beggar. You once had dreams of great achievement, hopes for everyday and a future to come – that was before the blindness set in. Frantic runs to the doctors did not help, and you slunk back to accept your ‘curse’, a world of darkness, a demeaning life as a mendicant. Sitting on the street one day, you hear shouts of a crowd and ask what is happening. They tell you, and in a moment of desperation, you think, what if this is really who he says he is?

So you start shouting, Son of David, have mercy on me! The people in the crowd try to hush you; after all, you’re interrupting the great man. But your desperation has taken you past caring for their propriety, and you shout louder. And louder. It gets silent, and you can’t feel the crowd anymore, and you’re about to go back to your begging spot when you hear the voice of the great healer. What do you want? he’s asking. You plead that all you want is to see.

“All right”, the great man says. “You can see, your faith has healed you!” When your eyes open and you see him for the first time, you are met with eyes that saw your desperate soul.

There’s something about desperation. It causes God to stop.

Champion for Christ

Like most ‘pseudo-realistic’ urbanites, I tend to shy away from making New Year’s resolutions. At least the written down and shared with the world ones – alas, I’m not as much a child of discipline as I’d like to be. That notwithstanding, I do have an end of year ritual that I suppose none of us future-cautious people can resist – reviewing the past.

Part of the reason why December can turn out to be quite depressing, is that it’s the month to realize just how badly you faired during the year. All the things that you thought would be done that didn’t materialize, all the promises you couldn’t keep, the fact that you’re a year older with nothing much to show for it, and so forth.I was in review mode as I went to church on the last Sunday of the year, and thankfully, so was my pastor.

And he fed me quite a shift in perspective. He spoke of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Not much talked about, is he? All we know is that he was a carpenter that married the mother of Jesus. Often, we fail to consider what an extraordinary assignment he had – to bring up the child Jesus, protect him, keep him safe and straight, make sure he was going to church often, and basically be a father.

It’s so easy to write off Joseph as just another ordinary man who amount to much. Not true. Pastor’s point was that God has a specific assignment for each one of us, and you should never think yourself unworthy of God’s attention. But it was what he said as he wrapped up his message that really got me: (in paraphrase) you’re a champion for the cause of Christ; don’t minimize your assignment. Your daily obedience and faithfulness,…the fact that you can look back and say that you’ve followed Christ for another whole year…just that makes you a champion.

It’s amazing how in looking back over the year, our walk with Christ comes across as a series of struggles, battles, near-death escapades and if you’re an average young Christian in Nairobi, the devil seems to have had quite his share of victories. Yet check out what 1 Peter 1 says:

v6: so be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while. These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold-and your faith is more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tested by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

My faith is that precious to God. Are you still standing in the faith after everything that tried to bring you down in 2009? You’re a great one! Did you continue to get up and follow Him every time you fell so bad you were sure you’d never recover? He has a banquet for you! Did you fight off pressures to quit and kept moving after Him even when it seemed hopeless? It’s not in vain! You’re a champion for the cause of Christ.

As for me, I’ve had a pretty good year, a victorious one even – I’m still saved, I love and am following Jesus and my faith in Him is sure. In fact, I’ve even gone ahead to make a resolution for 2010 – I’ll be a Champion for Christ one more year!