Meeting Jesus in Kenya

Two months ago, I traveled to Kenya for an educational conference, some touring, and a few days with my friend’s cousin who runs a children’s ministry for street children. My friend and I had no expectations for our time with her cousin, other than learning a little about the ministry and seeing some cute kids as well as having some time with her cousin and his family. We arrived to find ourselves presented with a detailed schedule for our next three days; we would begin on the streets, then watch these children in classes, chapel times, and counseling sessions at the children’s home, and then visit the children who had completed the program back at their rural homes with their families. 

This is how we found ourselves very unexpectedly walking through the slums of Kisumu Kenya with three Kenyan ministry leaders, picking up street kids. We would stop by a group of kids lying on the side of the road, or a couple of them would come up to us, recognizing one of the Kenyan workers. We would fist pump, having been warned to be careful not to shake hands for safety and health reasons. Then, the child or teenager would start walking along with us through the busy streets full of small business owners and markets. Many of the boys were carrying plastic water bottles with addictive shoe glue in the bottom of the bottle. Their eyes were glazed over and their steps unsteady. As we walked, a few wandered off, but we ended up with a group of 15 or so sitting with us in a park, listening as the Kenyan leaders began praying and sharing a Bible story with the boys. Some of the boys were nearly men. Others looked like 7 or 8, although we were told they were probably older than they looked. As we walked, I was trying to imagine what was going on in these boys' hearts and minds. Were they afraid? What did they feel when the numb feeling the glue gave them wore off, and their emotional pain and physical hunger rushed back in like a flood. They had run from pain into the deeper pain of their own poor solutions to their problems. I could sense what God must feel for these boys and how much he must hurt over every wrong done to them and how much he must long to comfort them when they scream out in fear in the night.

At one point, we were asked to share something - our testimony, a word of encouragement, a prayer. We looked at each other warily. What do you say to boys who are sleeping on the streets, who have run away from home because of bad relationships with their family? What do you say to children who you know are being abused, who are eating trash, who might currently be suffering from disease? As those privileged with warm beds, plenty of food, and safe families, what can we possibly say that would make sense to these boys? Somehow, we shared a few words about the hope in Jesus and how we all feel alone at times, but he is there with us and knows everything we are going through. 

After our meager words and a powerful, genuine Bible teaching from the Kenyan staff, we closed with a prayer, and the boys began to disperse again to the streets. One of the staff drew our attention to one tiny boy who had been sitting at the back of the group with her. She quietly shared that he was new to the streets, and she wanted us to pull him aside and see if he would come with us now to receive help. With hardly any conversation between them, the staff quietly gathered around the boy. I don’t know exactly what they shared with him, but very soon we were all standing up, and he was shyly following us out of the park. 

It was all I could do not to break down into tears right there. This boy was so small and quiet. The staff shared that he had come from Mombasa, a city nearly ten hours drive away. I imagined this boy hitching rides all the way across Kenya, running away from abuse possibly or simply searching for a better, easier life. And he found himself taken in by a group of boys with their own system of taking care of each other, encouraging each other in glue addiction and other forms of pleasure and forgetting. Before he was enveloped into this destructive group, he was delivered into the hands of this wise, loving ministry. As we quietly led him back to the home, I was overwhelmed by the picture of redemption. I looked down at him and smiled, and he was so clearly biting back his smile, afraid to let his feelings show or maybe not sure yet whether he should be happy. A day later, in clean clothes, playing with the other children at the home, he boldly smiled back at us.

Watching this boy get discovered and rescued reminded me of how God sees each and every one of these street children and each and every one of us. This boy was lost in the crowd, on his own, detached from those who should protect him. God saw him. God intervened through the Kenyan staff who noticed him and took him into their care. This boy is so precious to God, his heavenly father. It reminds me of Matthews 10:29-31, where Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” It’s hard to understand why he would allow some of these children to exist in the circumstances they are forced to endure, but no runaway or lost child is hidden from Him. For us who are privileged in many ways, we can still sometimes feel like our own lives are impossibly difficult and frustrating, and we wonder if God cares or if he even notices. No matter how small or large our problems, no matter the doubts and worries in our hearts, all of our thoughts and circumstances are laid out before God. He sees. He knows. He comforts. He rescues.

And the most beautiful part of all is getting to watch as he brings people of vastly different life circumstances together (such as ourselves and these precious boys and the Kenyan staff) and uses them to bless each other. Jesus never stood from afar and sent gifts through other people to those in need. He stopped and touched the blind man. He sat with the woman at the well. He let the lepers approach him. If we have any privileges in him, both earthly blessings of wealth and spiritual blessings of salvation, we have been given them so that we can share, and not just share from afar, but enter into the worlds of those less fortunate then us. As we kneel down and listen to their stories, as we see their pain, as we experience incredible redemption in their lives, we are dramatically changed. Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." When I met these boys, I encountered Jesus. His presence was so apparent to me in this experience, and I pray for similar encounters with Jesus for all of my friends. May we all be willing to sit down in the mud and enter deeply into the suffering of others, looking outside of our comfort zones and not passively throwing money at a good cause. God graciously gave me this opportunity to see him face to face through the "least of these" on the streets in Kenya, and I am praying that he graciously gives me and you more of these amazing opportunities.

For more information about this ministry, check out their website: http://agapechildren.org

Restoring Trust

The foundation of all relationships is trust.

This is not my original idea. Actually, if you look up the definition of the word trust on google, the two contextual examples given have to do with relationships. One is "relations have to be built on trust," and the other "a relationship built on mutual trust and respect." Trust is one of those words that is associated with relationships. "Do you trust me?" "You broke my trust." "I didn't trust him." "Trust me." These are the words that pepper our conversations as we step into and out of relationships and dig deeper into them.

What is the definition of trust? According to Merriam Webster, trust means "firm belief in the character, strength, or truth of someone." When we are children, we typically learn trust first with our parents. I still remember my dad holding the back of my bike and propelling me forward as I pedaled frantically on a two-wheeled bike for the first time. Why did I let him help launch me into this seemingly impossible ride? Because I trusted that he knew how to help me and, if I fell, he would be there to help me back up. As a child, I was born into a relationship in which I depended on my parents and had every reason to believe they would take care of me and tell me the truth.

As I grew, I learned what it meant to lose trust in people, as we all do. I saw the cracks in people's characters. I was lied to. I heard stories of fathers leaving their families and revealing an alternate life they had been hiding. A healthy fear grew in my heart and warned me that, while my parents and siblings were given to me, I could choose the other people I let into my life. I learned to hold off on trusting people until I had been able to fully measure their character. Like picking out a mango or melon at the grocery store, you can smell and squeeze and survey, but you never really know what the value of the fruit is until you cut into it. You have to see to the core. At a certain point, we learn that it's very dangerous to trust until we've seen this core.

We may define ourselves as the trusting kinds - the ones who will believe anything our friends tell us; I am frequently nodding my head along with someone's story only to be laughed at a moment later over my gullibility in believing some twisted tale or outlandish fact. However, this kind of gullible trust is no indicator of how trusting we are in all aspects of life. Another test of our tendency to trust is the extent of our independence. Are we more willing to step out on our own than to join ourselves closely with another person? Is the fear of what could be exposed and crushed within a relationship more real than the fear of finding ourselves alone and left to comfort and entertain ourselves on a Friday night? The sense of control when you do not have to think about trusting someone else is addictive. You seek your personal joy every day, choosing how you would most like to spend your time (even if your choices are worthy pursuits), without the worry and fear that comes with trying to please another or wishing that they would do a better job of pleasing you. You please yourself and worry only about disappointing yourself. It's a mirage of freedom and happiness that most of us realize we must abandon at some point in favor of relationship. And yet, with relationship, comes the issue of trust.

I'm not just speaking of romantic relationships. Even in friendships, there is a line you cross in which you allow yourself to be exposed, to really trust that person with a story from your past or a confession about the worries or dark thoughts in your mind. You walk away from that conversation with a slight panic. Did I say too much? Will they tell someone else? Will they still like me now that they know this? And then, maybe you get that phone call or note the next day, reassuring you that they still want to see you and that they will keep checking in. Or, maybe one time or twenty times, that call never came, and you felt like you left your heart in the middle of Jason's Deli over a giant baked potato.

This moment of exposure costs more than a thousand priceless, affirmative phone calls. We harbor that betrayal of our trust, even a non-threatening silence in response to our divulging conversation, as a signpost reminding us to beware. And a few significant signposts can result in a wall, a wall of non-disclosure and independence.

So what does it look like for someone to breach the wall or for us to step outside the gates? There is an image I am always returning to when I fear the strength of my own wall. Of course its source is literary and perhaps will not speak to all as it speaks to me.

Unless you are an avid fan of Charlotte Bronte or gothic novels, it is doubtful that you have picked up Charlotte's novel Villette. A number of years ago, I became swept away by this novel of a school teacher setting out on her own in a strange foreign land (not a far cry from my own life now). Although I remember little of novel's plot, I will never forget this one quote, expressing the thoughts of the protagonist soon after her arrival.

"In the double gloom of tress and fog; I could only follow his tread. Not the least fear had I; I believe I would have followed that frank tread, through continual night, to the world's end."

The images captivated me. The darkness and gloom. The vastness of the world's end. And that frank tread.

The words "frank tread" in particular struck me because they imply an honest, determined walk. Candid and straightforward combined with action and sense of purpose. It's an unusual paring of words.

When we talk about trust, we might work up to the point of sitting and facing someone and mutually sharing sensitive information about ourselves. But, if we begin to talk about following someone, the wall of wariness that must be broken down becomes infinitely higher. To follow someone voluntarily and without fear requires an incredible amount of trust. It makes sense that the girl of Charlotte Bronte's novel had no choice but to follow since it was night and the place was unfamiliar. What is striking is that she had no fear and that she went so far as to say she would continue following past the point of requirement to the very world's end.

I think of course of human relationships and what it means to speak these words about someone. If we were able to speak such words of trust and to follow another's footsteps because we knew they were true and honest, it would be nothing short of a miracle. And that's what deep, trust-based relationships are: miracles. We diminish them if we consider them anything less than that.

And I think of God. I think of how we are most certainly living in the darkness and gloom of this life. Of course, there are rays of sunshine peaking their way through, but we are living in a shroud of finiteness. We are limited in what we see to our visible surroundings and the present time. We can predict using various logical methods and calculations and instincts, but what we know is just our own feeble bodies. Even those, we barely know. How long they will keep running like machines, taking breaths without our bidding?

We either accept what we know and seize pleasure while we can or we crouch in fear and refuse to move. Or, we hear the "frank tread" of God up ahead, and we decide to follow. And the problem is that we cannot cut God to the core like we can a melon, to see what he is made of. We cannot even truly get to the core of another human being. And God is unknowable in his entirety.

So why should we trust him for the next few steps, not to mention to the world's end? Perhaps, we could consider that he was there from the beginning even before our parents knew us. He was offering himself to us, trying to show us how much we depended on him, how much we needed this relationship with him. We can choose to trust our parents in propelling us forward for the first time on our two-wheeled bikes, but who do we trust when we are swimming through a sea of life-shaping decisions and unforeseen circumstances?

Not only was God there at the beginning, seeking to gain our trust by revealing our utter dependance on him for everything, but God has also given us these promises and pictures of what it looks like when we live in relationship with him. There is no more perfect image of trust than the picture of him walking with and leading us through the treacherous paths of life.

"But now thus says the Lord, he who created you...he who formed you, O Israel: 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called ou by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior.. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you...Fear not for I am with you." Isaiah 43:1-5

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" Psalm 23:1-4

If we enter into a relationship with God, he demands that we trust him. And, when we trust him, we enter into beautiful, freeing, life-giving relationship with him. Trust forms the bookends of our relationship with God, both what initiates and sustains it. Trust in him is the only safe, unbreakable trust.

To follow God is to follow a frank tread in the darkness and gloom without a hint of fear. To follow God is to trust him that, along this often scary road, we will find green pastures and still waters. Instead of the chipping away of our souls that broken trust imparts, he will lead us into the restoration of our souls. To trust him is to invite the miracle of relationships with others. With such deep security in him, we can afford to risk our hearts in relationships with a few well-chosen people. We can see a glimpse of his faithfulness in the way those chosen ones walk, and we choose to trust them, all the while keeping our eyes on him, our perfect guide.

Mentorship: A Turning Toward God

Who are your mentors? Especially spiritually? Who are those people that you look to the most for advice and who teach you the most? Maybe a pastor, your parents, an older friend, a youth leader, a teacher, or a professor? Keep that person in mind.

And, if no one came to mind, you might relate to me about four years ago. I've always walked to the beat of my own drum as they say. Usually, I'm confident in my beliefs and decisions, and I do not go seeking out the help of others in making those decisions or strengthening those beliefs. I have my Bible and my prayer life. That's enough. The problem is that it is not enough, at least if you believe Scripture. We were created to live in relationships with others. In the act of creating the first woman, God was designing people to help one another, to protect one another, to listen to one another, to teach one another. 1 Peter 5:1-5 talks about "the elders...shepherding the flock of god that is among you...and likewise you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." This relationship of receiving advice and guiding those who are younger is not optional. It is commanded in Scripture.

Of course, for me, it was not as simple as reading this passage and feeling immediately convicted. Instead, while serving in a leadership role, I found myself fumbling about in many ways. I had arrived at one of those familiar crossroads. Confused about where to go next in my career and filled with agonizing questions about what the future held (in some ways I have yet to leave this crossroads), I was crying on the phone with my mom. To give myself some credit, I had sense enough to call a parent and at least express some of the fears and questions running through my mind. But, I was not in a posture to listen. I still believed the solution lay somewhere in my swirling mind. My beautiful, wise momma graciously challenged me to consider meeting with someone older than me and talking about life. A name immediately popped in my head, as if it had been waiting there in case I ever humbled myself enough to consider the idea.

Thus began a precious season of meeting a friend and mentor regularly just to chat about life over Starbucks coffee. She had many words of advice and sometimes just a nod of understanding. I found myself anxiously awaiting those Saturday mornings, looking forward to asking for input about some complicated relationship or situation in my life. And, also I relished the stories we would share and the laughs over her adventures as a new parent. Oh how I would have missed out if I had ignored this prompting from my mom, who has also been a "slightly" more long-term mentor of mine.

Now, let's return to those of you who already had a mentor in mind. Maybe, as I was describing one of my mentors, nostalgia overwhelmed you as you recalled your own sweet memories with your mentor. For some of you, though, I have a feeling that there is pain associated with a mentor in your life. The truth is that, while we must have these sharpening, encouraging people in our lives, they often hurt us. Or sometimes, they just leave, and their absence hurts us.

What do we do when this happens? Especially if that person wounded us or failed us in some way, it becomes easy to throw our hands in the air and decide to do whatever we want. We feel released from responsibility because they are gone. We lose our bearings because they did not live up to our expectations. We were following them, but now we are not so sure of the path or if we want to be on it anymore.

There is a terribly sad story in the Bible that gives a picture of this progression from firmly grounded mentee to loose cannon. (You can find the whole story, which I will not have time to fully summarize here, in 2 Chronicles 22-24.) To set the stage for this tragedy, there was once a young prince named Joash who was rescued from his murderous royal family and adopted into the family of a priest named Jehoiada. Jehoiada raised Joash and taught him in all the ways of the Lord and then, when the time came, he fought to place Joash on the throne that was rightfully his. Under the leadership of Joash, who was still following the counsel of Jehoiada, the people of Judah returned to the Lord and worshiped him with their whole hearts. He had incredible influence spiritually over the people, and he decided to devote himself to restoring the house of the Lord. Sounds like a happy, victorious story so far...

Well, at the incredible age of 130, Jehoiada dies (not shockingly!). Immediately after the death of his mentor, Joash is visited by a group of princes who praise him and so distract him from the Lord (perhaps with thoughts of his own glory and goodness), that together they lead their people completely away from God and renew the worship of other pagan gods and idols. Even though God sends prophets to draw Joash back, he never repents, and his story ends in complete tragedy.

When I read this story a few months ago, what came into clear focus for me was the importance of mentors and how, like any relationship or tool established for good, they can end up being our downfall. Jehoiada as a mentor to Joash was clearly a blessing and, without him, Joash might not have ever come to love God or lead his people in such pure devotion to God. But clearly, Joash must have completely relied on Jehoiada for the heart of his belief and motivation to follow Christ. The very moment he was gone, Joash lacked all resolve to resist the temptation of other gods. Maybe Jehoiada and the security Joash felt in him was a type of idol for Joash.

My question is what would happen if your mentor disappeared and people of opposing beliefs surrounded you, praising you and counseling you to go a different way? Would you immediately feel lost and blindly follow? Or what if a mentor in your life suddenly made a grievous mistake or revealed a side of themselves you had never seen before? Would you question the values they had imparted to you? Would you abandon those values, feeling that they were futile now that the person who taught them to you had failed to measure up?

The burden on my heart in sharing this story and these thoughts about mentorship is that more people would value relationships with mentors, counselors, godly parents and teachers, but that they would value them realistically and graciously. The reality is that people, even those most essential to your growth, will leave you or you will leave them at some point. It is also very likely that they will disappoint you. But the point of these relationships is not to provide you with a perfect example but to lead you closer to Jesus and to his will for your life. Often these relationships will build into you for many years until you are a strong tower for the Lord. But, at some point, even the breaking off of these relationships or the realization that these leaders in your life are in fact just broken human beings can lead you closer to Jesus, if you let it. Joash is an example of someone not prepared for this break. He did not run to God in that moment of fear, grief, and disillusionment. He looked away.

In Isaiah, however, we see a man who allowed the death of his mentor and leader King Uzziah (I'm drawing on context from previous Bible lessons and do not have citations for this information) to drive him to his most profound vision of the Lord yet! Isaiah 6:1 says, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple."

This is my prayer for myself and for anyone reading, that in that moment of greatest disappointment or loss, we would be given the grace to turn toward the Lord and not away. I pray that, when faced with human weakness and the limitations of human relationships, we would see more fully the beauty of God and the perfection of his wisdom, counsel, and revelation. May we see him more every day until that beautiful day when we see him clearly without veil or mist.