The Generator and Psalm 19

Since the electrical service in our part of Ouaga experiences frequent interruptions, we needed to install a generator.  We had been able to make do with flashlights, candles, and laptop batteries, but the frequency and duration of the power cuts were beginning to make normal life nearly impossible.  When the warm season arrives in late February or March with 100+ degree temperatures, sleep would be reduced to bathing in our own perspiration.  We needed a generator.

I instructed the guards in the operation of the generator and how to transfer our home from the grid to the generator.  Rather than simply throwing a switch, the transfer involves a short warm-up cycle for the generator, flipping a set of circuit breakers that protect the generator from faults and overloads, and moving the transfer switch from the “normal” to the “generator” position.

Last night I was blasted out of a movie-like dream by the sound of the generator starting.  It was the first time we have experienced a nighttime power cut with the generator.  After a few minutes, we realized the nearly deafening din of the generator inaptly labeled, “silent” would be more than we could reasonably expect our neighbors to endure.

I pulled on my pants and shoes and went outside to talk with our guard, Desirée.  I congratulated him for following the procedures and successfully starting the generator.  I made sure that he understood that we were both very pleased that he and the generator did exactly what was needed.  After waiting a few minutes more for the electrical supply to be restored, I turned to Desirée and explained that we could probably make it through a reasonably cool night without the generator.  Desirée shut down the generator and transferred the switch according to plan.  As the generator became silent and darkness fell like a pot lid, I looked up at the sky and was stunned.

For the first time since Janet and I arrived in Burkina Faso the Harmattan winds had died and the dust had mostly cleared—enough for hundreds if not thousands of stars to become visible—countless more than the usual handful visible through the airborne dust.  “C’est incroyable!” I gasped as Desirée tuned his glance toward the sky.  He said something in Mooré that I did not understand, but I could tell that he too was marveling at the stars.  “Il est comme Psaumes 19, …“Les cieux déclarent la Gloire de Dieu,” I offered.  Desirée smiled, but I suspected that he did not fully understand the context.  I suggested, “Desirée, lisez Psaume 19.” He opened his Mooré Bible as we trained our flashlights on its pages and he read the opening verses.  A smile came across his face as he looked back to the sky and exclaimed, “D’accord!  Les cieux declarant la gloire de Dieu.” 

There we stood staring into the sky in the moonless African night made even darker by the power cut and illuminated only by the countless stars as Desirée repeated, “La gloire de Dieu.”

LEARNING FRENCH

Learning French has been the most challenging and difficult objective in my life, so far.  The past two plus years have been a period of frustration, disappointment, and an ever-present sense that it may be time just to give up.  There comes a time when the millstone of discouragement hangs so heavy that there may be only one remaining thread between perseverance and defeat and even that last gossamer cord seems to be in the process of unraveling.  The thread that checked my surrender was simple, but very enduring; failure was not an option.  God had given me the task.  Without a working knowledge of French I could not advance on the path He had set before me.

 Saint Paul set down God’s words when wrote, “…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Maybe there was more, much more than French that God wanted me to learn before I made it to the mission field.  The days, weeks, months, and years of suffering through inscrutable grammar, confounding syntax, and physically impossible pronunciation may also have been the means to another end, or two.   

My experience with learning a new language may be very similar to our waiting upon our peripatetic crate of supplies.  The much-needed box filled with tools, utensils, equipment, clothing and furnishings has been forever arriving, but never really here.  I have been forced to repair everything including furniture, plumbing, electrical devices, laptops, doors, and even our truck with little more than my Victorinox pocket tool and a few simple hand tools and at times even a stone as a hammer.. 

I have had to improvise and make do with what I had on hand. I had to learn to do much more than I thought I could with much less than I thought that I needed.  I have had to learn to use what I have to the greatest possible utility.  It has been much like that with my French language skills.  My vocabulary toolbox is still very light and relatively empty.  Lacking the size and depth of vocabulary, I have been forced to combine and arrange my poverty of words to express thoughts and subjects that normally demand more a specific and specialized vocabulary. 

Much like using a tool for a purpose for which it was not intended, an increased reliance on imagination rather than competency has been a means to an end in both repairing things and expressing myself in a still-foreign language.  I have learned that it is not so much the breadth of the tool collection or the depth  of one’s vocabulary, but how one uses the resources at one’s disposal that determines how close we come to reaching our objectives—fixing a toaster or successfully expressing an idea.

There is still the rub that this works in but one direction when it comes to language.  I may devise linguistic work-arounds by using the few primary colors of my limited vocabulary to mix more complex hues and shades, but this skill is of little to no use when the flow in in the other direction.

I cannot comprehend words and terms that I do not know.  The time required to extract meaning by contextualizing unknown words is too great when listening to someone speaking.  Words are lost in the interim while searching mental registers for possible meanings to an unrecognized word. 

Comprehension is the other half of the equation.  There a few if any work-arounds to simply understanding the spoken word if the word is unknown.  A limited vocabulary is more constraining when receiving a message than when sending.  So two lessons attended my comprehension: first, endurance does indeed produce character (or some degree of language skill) and second, while there may be work-arounds and interim solutions, they are only transitional.  In the end only continued hard work and perseverance will accomplish the objective.  So as suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, there is hope that one day I will reach my objective to speak good French well and that I will have learned a lesson or two in suffering through learning a new language.

In that day when I finally am able to speak and understand French adequate to the task it will be much like the day when I finally experience the joy of opening our wandering crate of tools designed for the task and need not hobble about making do with a limited inventory of either words or hand tools.  When learning a language or repairing something there are times when “good enough” isn’t.

The “Fou”

There is a man who lives mostly on the street to the side of our house.  He is “The Fou”—the crazy man.  It is not so much a pejorative term as it is simply descriptive, at least by neighborhood standards.  He spends a good part of his day digging large holes in the dirt road next to our home.  Some of the holes are deep enough to make my 4-wheel drive truck bottom out.  Once I even had to rock the truck back-and-forth before driving out of one of the deepest holes.  The holes can even be seen on Google Earth.

He doesn’t seem very happy most of the time.  Often, he will spend the better part of the day involved in what can only pass for an angry diatribe or possibly a heated dispute with some invisible adversary.   At times he sounds to be cursing something or someone.  Sometimes, the volume of his shouts and barks even rise above the blaring rap music from the man-high speaker in front of the small boutique across the street.  He scares the young children and is the subject of ridicule for the adolescents.  To most others he is just invisible.  He’s “The Fou”—the crazy one.  Invisible, tortured, and mostly forgotten.

I started waving to him on my bumpy rides to work in the morning.  As my truck jumped and jostled along the well-excavated road I would offer a furtive wave before throwing both hands back onto the steering wheel to keep from nose diving into something slightly smaller than a bomb crater.  Often he would wave back.  Other times he would just stare.  He would hardly do what I expected.  Of course, he was “The Fou.” 

One particularly dusty African morning as I rounded the corner while scanning the road for the most passable route, I spotted a rather large fire. “The Fou” was burning a pile of trash he had collected.  Trash burning is a fairly normal part of life’s routine in Ouaga as it is elsewhere.  The only problem was that the lowest branches of the trees around our home were beginning to brown and burn.  I stopped my truck and watched for a minute as "The Fou" piled small handfuls of trash on the fire.  Few people on the uncrowded street paid him much attention.  After all, he was “The Fou.”  He was mostly invisible, but at that time he was more than just visible to me.

I walked over to “The Fou” and told him that the fire was too big and was starting to burn the trees near our home.  A youngish woman from the home next to ours and where I suspected “The Fou” had some connection came out from behind the large steel gate.  In my painful French I explained that the fire was damaging the trees and that it was too close to our home.  I asked her to throw some water on the fire to extinguish it. 

 At that, “The Fou” began to urinate on the fire.  I appreciated his directness.  As the pile of trash hissed and steamed he then offered me what turned out to be a rather wet hand.  I thanked him for helping to extinguish the fire.   As I busily wiped my hand with a used tissue from my pocket, I noticed that half the neighborhood was standing outside of their gated walls regarding the nasara (white person) who was giving “The Fou” a bit of grief—probably more excitement than they had seen in a long while.  Most turned away possibly disappointed by the rather lukewarm confrontation.  I continued on my way to the Bible translation center where I worked.  “The Fou” returned to his digging.  All was right with the world, more or less.  I was determined to wash my hands as soon as possible.

Tonight I sat at the kitchen table to chat with Janet as she prepared another of her incredible culinary surprise meldings of American and Burkinabé cuisine, we could hear the bellows and screeches of “The Fou.”  He seemed tormented by whatever spirits chose to make him miserable.  Slowly it came to me.  Maybe his “issues” are spiritual.  In this country where evil need not masquerade as something more attuned to western sensibilities, dark spirits move more freely.  Maybe he is a modern day Gadarene in need of the Savior.

With Janet’s blessing I grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge and headed outside.  As I rounded the gate in our wall I was joined by our night guadian Desiré who watches out for us two old(er) nasara.  We slowly walked over to “The Fou” who was chattering away as he mined gravel from one of his calf-deep holes.  Désiré exchanged greetings and asked “The Fou” how he was.  “The Fou” responded that he was okay.  I offered “The Fou” a (dry) hand and asked, “Ça va bien?”  He responded, "'Ça va."  I handed him the Coke.  “A petit cadeau pour vous.”  I shook his (dry) hand once more and wished him a “Bon soir.” He responded with a nod and a nascient smile as Désiré and I returned to the gate.

“The Fou” remained unusually quiet for the remainder of the evening.  Janet and I wondered if he did indeed need more serious praying.  Jesus healed some people and cast demons out of others.  In a world where science rules, we may miss the root cause of many maladies.  We may be too engrossed in laboratory conditions to remember how things once were when the Bible was more current than today’s news.

As soon as we can, Janet and I will have our Burkinabé French tutor who is also a pastor to come and pray with us over “The Fou.”   

Please remember him in your prayers as well.  We will also try to learn his real name.

Breaking for Chickens

My original intent was to make a short, glib Face Book post about my having been in Africa long enough to discover why the chicken crossed the road with the answer being for the sole purpose to make me jam on the brakes.  African chickens in these parts dawdle and often stop to peck at something in the middle of the road just as a car comes barreling along.  And even “barreling along” takes on a different connotation when one “barrels” at 2 or 3 Kph or one risks leaving an abundance of car parts laying behind in the cratered road for the plethora of Burkinabé entrepreneurs to harvest.  Today’s road collectables are tomorrow’s part sale or repair at any of the countless roadside garagiste’s.  But I digress.

The hoped for glib remark about the chicken’s pause du café causing me to push the brake pedal until it leaves a mirrored impression on the underside of the floor boards morphed into a two-day odyssey that left me even more enamored of Burkinabé culture and lessons learned from or about the jaywalking African chicken.

My growing expertise in the near panicked reliance upon the brake pedal led to a new adventure on the somewhat notorious Fada Road where enough motos to carry all of Father Abraham’s promised descendants fill the street like a never ending swarm of salmon single-mindedly seeking their to-die-for destination.  Driving on Fada Road involves all five senses plus those of any passengers daring enough to come along for the ride.  Except that of the driver, unconsciousness makes the experience infinitely more enjoyable.

The three-pointer in driving on the Fada Road is dodging the errant truck or steroidal SUV dropping itself directly in front of me as I drive past a signal that must have looked very red to the driver whose behemoth fades into the dust as my brake pedal carves a groove into the blacktop and the moto driver behind me tries to make a very good impression by making a very good impression on my rear bumper.  He wasn’t driving too close; he just was trying to see what station we were listening to on the car radio.

My French isn’t all that bad, especially if I had been trying to order “deux plates du jour avec une bouteille d’eau gaseous” rather than trying to explain my intense interest in calling the police while trying to engage him in a sufficiently interesting repartee long enough for Janet to take a photo of his moto and license plate in the event he leaves before the police can part the sea of motos and arrive at the scene.  As he was leaving I was trying to order dinner from the policeman on the other end of the phone call and would have been overjoyed had the Burkinabé version of Pizza Hut arrived two hours later rather than two very personable policemen.

My new boss of the job I had held for all of two-and-a-half weeks arrived in the nick to enthrall Janet and me with a fluency and panache that made me suspect that he was really a full-blooded Burkinabé with one very evident gene mutation that made him appear to be a dyed-in-the-wool Kanuk.  The police took their measurements and measured me up and had pity on my left coronary artery by deciding that Mr. Moto was a fault—evidently his good impression on my bumper made a good impression on the police as well.  After my boss made me suspect with a high level of certainty that he really was Burkinabé the way he chatted effortlessly and sincerely with the police and a few passers-by, I learned that we had to go to the prefecture de police to make a statement the next afternoon.  I wondered if any of the statements I had made right after the accident would suffice, but discretion overruled that thought.

The next afternoon, our very capable Burkinabé guide and sometime babysitter, Janet who I hoped would moan and cry like a professional mourner at the first sight of handcuffs moving in my direction, and I still memorizing the best French phrases with absolutely nothing to do with ordering dinner headed down the dreaded Fada Road past the exact point where my day had taken a left-hand turn 24-hours before.

The three of us sat in plastic chairs in a very small room with a very personable police official and a desk that occupied at least half of the room.  The overhead fan was covered in a spider’s net that long ago provided a big enough catch to feed the spider for its entire life which appeared to have ended sometime just before the first Bush administration.  The most visible not-paper object on the desk was the ubiquitous “tampon”—French for rubber stamp.

After a conversation in which I participated but soon assumed an inferior position as I listened to our Burkinabé handler deftly explain much too fast for me to follow his understanding of the previous day’s events.  Janet and I compared notes to see if we caught enough between us to figure if I would not be sleeping at home that night.  The official smiled often enough for me to breathe again.  He asked me more questions, he wrote at length, he took the copies of the photos Janet had taken of the moto, he wrote some more, and our handler stood up and began wishing the official a bon journee as did Janet and I,  repeatedly and with great sincerity.  We were home free or at least heading out the door of his cabine and onto the dreaded Fada Road once more.

Not quite home free.  We now had to go to the assurance office to pick up a statement that declared the moto driver at fault so the police could make him pay for the very good impression he had made.  Not only on the Fada Road once more, but heading downtown, during rush hour.  To make a long story less long, we all left about 45-minutes later with the necessary paperwork.  We will wait for a call from the police to tell us when we will head down once again to the prefecture to meet with the official and Mr. Moto to arrange for restitution or at least (as is Janet’s and my wish, for him take responsibility for a bad good impression) and we call it a day.

My lesson of the day is that if you have an accident in Burkina Faso, you must stop the car at the exact spot where the accident occurred so the police can take measurements.  As for a jaywalking African chicken in the middle of the road, next time I will lay off the brakes and just make a good impression-- on the chicken.

Here

As would be expected, there are many features and details of day-to-day life here in Africa that are significantly different from life in the US or even Europe.  Differences in language, culture, climate, economics, sights, sounds, and smells continually remind one from rising to retiring that this country is not simply a derivative of the West with a few different languages.  It is concurrently ancient and modern—a land of mud huts and white mansions, wood fires and cell phones, donkey carts and Land Cruisers.

Initially Ouaga can appear simple, unsophisticated, and coarse.  Yet this is also a land of the earliest peoples, ancient kingdoms, engineered architecture, and arts as enticing and expressive as anything to come out of Florence, London, or Beijing.  Many of us in western societies and especially the New World cannot fully comprehend something much older than our own nation or social unit.  This all reminds me that I all too easily mistake that which I cannot see for that which does not exist.

We have scarcely been here a week and there are manifold hazards to claiming any familiarity or wisdom too soon.  We know less than a little and have an unimaginable amount of learning to do.  The very differences that now separate us from truly being or living here must be the things that one day will connect and bind us to this new land.  For the immediate moment we remain strangers in a strange land.  God is good.

From Here to There

We have just recently come to the realization that we are a bit "strange" (some could say "eccentric" in my case.)  One reason behind this realization is the undeniable fact that Janet and I are heading for the mission field at the time when many mission workers our ages are returning and even "retiring."  In a way, it is like trying to enter a theater at the end of the movie as the crowds are hurrying through the exits.  Where is the sense to it?

The "sense" is that this was God's idea.  He kindly grabbed our attention to the fact that we were close to wasting our lives. 

We had so far done mostly everything "right" as we glided towards retirement age.  We had good jobs, a nice house in a “good” neighborhood, some money in the bank, modest, but healthy retirement resources, tons of "stuff," and good health.  Much like the rich young man in the parables of Jesus (Matthew 19: 16--22, Mark 10: 17--22, Luke 18: 18--25), we lacked one thing--we did not value God supreme above everything else.

Now we do.  We know that there is nothing that even comes close to being as important as God--not money, not any of our possessions, not our big, old home, not our friends, and not even our family.  When Christ told us to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind it was not a suggestion.  Countless followers of Christ have marked this as true by payment with their lives.  To value God less than this is to count Him worth-less.

We're not religious nut jobs or blind followers of a nice fairytale.  Like uncountable others we have encountered the eternal God of the Bible through His Son Jesus Christ.  He has been and continues to be lovingly relentless in changing our hearts and minds and thusly our lives.  We are grossly imperfect creatures who struggle daily with our sin as we try to honor God in what we think, say, and do.  God is the source of our highest pleasure.  Theologian John Piper says it best, "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him."

We are going on mission to Africa when we should be thinking of retirement not because we are nice people or altruistic or anything like that.  We are doing the only thing that is possible for us to do.  We are no better than anyone else.  As someone whose name I have long forgotten has said, "We are beggars who want to show other beggars where we have found good Bread."

Travelling Through Time

A western-born yogi by the name of Ram Das--nee Richard Alpert, (Pre- LSD)--wrote a book, "Be Here Now."  There may be some sense, even if just to the title.  In our minds, we can occupy time quite different from the time experienced by our physical selves. Both memories and anticipation can take us to places other than the present  There are a couple of interesting novels about persons who managed to think themselves corporally into other times, one by the recently late Richard Matheson of “Somewhere in Time” fame. I doubt that such time travel is possible, but our minds can make it seem as though we can accomplish temporal displacement either by intent or by accident.

When we arrived in Chambéry just over a year ago, it was next to impossible to feel that we were “here” as we found (and lost) our way through and around town while understanding and speaking little of the language.  Time took a different sequence and dimension, for we did not feel to be fully here and in the “now”. 

Similarly, as we now prepare to return to the United States, we feel out of step with the time and rhythm of our erstwhile home in France.  We slowly fade as temporal “ghosts”, not so much a part of the “now” as our minds and attention begin to be occupied more by where we will be than where we are.  We begin to live in “other time.” We leave sooner in time than in body. Each day we are more “there” than “here” as the words “tomorrow” and “next week” no longer refer to us in Chambéry, but a not-yet-us in Colorado. 

Soon, “tomorrow” will sprout and grow in Burkina Faso as the familiar “good-byes” of family and friends become echoes in a fading Colorado “now” replaced by the “hellos” of a temporarily unintelligible new language in Africa.

A Voyage of Left-Hand Turns

5 5Surely you will summon nations you know not,

and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
ecause of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”
6Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
Isaiah 55:5--8

 Almost all of the missionaries we have met have said that they never wound up where they wanted to go and that they never followed the path they had anticipated.  Every story is filled with delays, surprises, and left-hand turns. Unanticipated events and sudden turns are such a regular part of the path to missions that such emergent events can and should be anticipated. They are part of the process.

God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  Thank God.  How boring and uninspiring it would be to know that everything will turn out the way we want it to.  How disappointing it would be to find that the universe works within a framework that we understand and can easily imagine and even expect.  How small would a God be who could be confined by our imaginations when we daily encounter a God who never ceases to amaze us with the unexpected, the unanticipated, and even the unwarranted?

When our original parents first violated God’s law it would have been easy to imagine an angry God swiping His hand across the face of the earth and starting over, much as I do when I start a project that goes terribly wrong.  Instead God surprised countless generations of humanity with an incredible left-hand turn at Calvary where God Himself became man and redeemed us from our sins.  The Creator submitted himself to the spit, scorn, and punishment of His creatures to save us from ourselves.  Talk about a sharp left-hand turn.

Consider our individual lives.  Regardless of when we came to an eternal relationship with God through His Son Jesus we were and remain sinners.  We are so stained by sin that a Holy God cannot look upon us.  We are fouled beyond description.  Yet into each of our lives this God who defies human logic and reason wraps us in the arms of His Son to wash us of guilt and restore us to a full relationship with Him.  Many of us first encountered the Savior while well on our way to perdition, spectacularly unaware of what lay in wait at the end of an unrepentant and wasted life.  Against all human logic, reason, and imagination God’s Son willingly suffered and died that we may live.

The path to missions is filled with delays.  Many pre-field missionaries need to learn a new language before moving on to the mission field.  This may include moving an entire family to a foreign country where nothing is familiar, everything takes a lot more time and work, children encounter the frightening unknown, spouses are stressed by what would normally be the routine, and the enemy relentlessly pounds away with doubt and despair in his quiver.  One may never feel as unsure and alone as when spiritual warfare withers even the most steeled resolve to follow the path set before the pre-field missionary.

The mission harvest is ready and full.  Billions of people have yet to encounter God in an eternal, saving relationship.  And billions do not have His word in their heart language.  Until we attended church services in a foreign language for months on end, we did not truly understand how hungry one could become to hear the Gospel in one’s heart language. When we had the happy occasion to hear a message delivered in English we could savor the living waters of His word.  There is so much to be done.  There are too many who go to the grave with no hope.  There are too many—billions who do not know the God who became man to save us from ourselves.

In Luke 10:2 Christ is recorded as saying, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  Yet the unplanned, unanticipated, left-hand turns have turned many workers back to their homes and away from missions.  Support from mission partners—those who send those who can go—have fallen victim to the contracting economies of the world.  Mission organizations are trimming budgets, slimming staffs, and lowering expectations as support shrinks.  The harvest withers on the vine.  People live and die without ever encountering the living God or develop an eternal relationship with Him.  How incredibly sad.

The path to missions is never straight.  The lord of this world does his level worst to let people starve having never been satisfied with the bread of life.  The evil one is satisfied by the throngs who die not knowing Jesus Christ and not having God’s word to provide them with sustenance.  Each minute, each hour, each day people fall into the pit of eternal separation from God because the workers who are ready to work the harvest fall victim to the transient vagaries of economic circumstances.

Those of us who have an eternal, saving relationship with God through His Son Jesus are like voyagers who sit in the lifeboats while wearing their life jackets as we grow satisfied if not smug in our salvation as the lost continue to dance and party on the deck of a sinking boat.

Pastor John Piper, one of the clearest and loudest voices support of missions has said it best by summarizing the Great Commission in four words, “Go, send, or disobey.”  How sad if we cannot rise up and sustain an army of harvesters to snatch as many as possible from falling forever into the pit.  Our primary charge as followers of Jesus is to share Good news with the world.  He has done the hard part by redeeming us.  We just need to share that good news.  We are so close, too close to force the workers who are ready to work the harvest to stand pat and allow the harvest to wither on the vine. That’s not why God became man to save us from ourselves. 

Christ did the hard part.  We just need to let the world know what He has done.  We need to send out the workers to finish the harvest.  It’s the least we can do and it’s what Christ commanded us to do.

“For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” 

Romans 10: 12-15

The entire time we were in Burkina Faso we were imbued with the fine red dust arising from the red clay soil. Any shuffling foot, passing moto, or arid breeze would give rise to swirls of red dust that colored everything and filled the air. The scene in every direction was like a painting on a dull, red canvas.

Half-way through our stay and in our struggle to keep the dust out of our apartment,... our clothes, our laptop, our food, and our noses and mouths we surrendered to its inevitability. The dust was unrelentingly pervasive and invasive—it was to be a part of everything. Clothes are now died a ruddy color. I believe that there may even be traces of the dust incorporated into our DNA. Resistance (as the Borg would say) was futile.

Then it struck me how much the red dust was like God’s love. The dust, much like God’s love is visible everywhere. It fills and covers everything. It finds a way inside even after our best efforts to keep it out. Like His grace, it is irresistible and it becomes part of us. It covers us like a blanket. And when we think that we have succeeded in removing every trace of it we find that it has avoided our best efforts and is still very much present.

Much like the heat of the sun in Psalm 19, there is no escaping the fine red dust or God’s love. We may think we have it for a moment only to discover that it is still very much present.

Thank God.

3 February 2013

 

During the past two weeks at SIL in Burkina Faso I have come to realize that I have often (or usually) taken the Holy Bible for granted.

I am humbled after hearing how individual translators diligently and tirelessly labor FOR DECADES (!) often under harsh bush conditions to learn new cultures and languages and then accurately and faithfully translate the Scriptures into heart languages that have not had God's word. I need to remember to celebrate the Bible as do people groups who hold it in their hands for the very first time.

I am not a translator and I still struggle in my French studies, but I am anxious to return to Burkina to do what little I can to advance Bible translation--caring for buildings and systems or even helping to repair the luggage of a translator recently arrived from Mali.
...
I envy the young man who held the basket of bread and fishes while Christ fed the thousands--it was a small role, but the opportunity to witness a miracle. I had the opportunity to join the celebration of the completion of the translation of the Holy Bible into the Fulfuldé language. It was a similar miracle in that thousands would now be able to feed on the Bread of Life.

I cannot imagine what I would do if the Bibles in our home all disappeared and I could not recall one verse of Scripture.