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.