Thoughts from the Team
I think that all humanitarians are secretly believers in God though they may have convinced themselves otherwise. Naturalists and pastoralists too. It’s amazing to be here on the other side of the world in the midst of all this grandeur and splendor that in so many ways reminds me of home and at the same time is completely alien. The moon is upside down so it waxes the wrong way. The rock formations look like something you might see in Utah or Arizona but they’re the wrong color. And I don’t recognize any of the star constellations. But it’s still awe-inspiringly, jaw-droppingly, remarkably lovely. We’ve been having some rainstorms with deafening thunder, and we had our own little version of a star-talk the other night, which only made me think of how Jeff Lilley always follows his star-talks with How Great Thou Art. The lyrics reflect perfectly our experience here: O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder/Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made/I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder/Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then in the midst of all this beauty, we are here doing all this work—repairs, cleaning, tearing down old fences, putting up new ones, helping take care of children, swapping recipes around a cup of rooibos (Isabel taught us how to make rusks and we taught her how to make pie)—to help our brothers. But what is a brother without a Father to lead us and bind us? It makes me think this is how is must have been in the early church, with the apostles going off to other parts of the world and helping other people establish churches and do what they do better—whose children did they watch after? What recipes did they swap? What projects did they help finish? And in the midst of it all, the Lord’s presence, and us in the midst of Him. Wow.
– KELSEY FORBES