on.our.way.
someday the whole world will see.
just got off the phone with carol and musonda, the staff in zambia. i just had to call them using some left over minutes my parents had from calling me. oh my gosh. it was the best thing of my life. carol answered “taonga!” laughing and not believing that i had called them. we talked about how nothing has changed there, how we wished i was sitting on their bed with them, how musonda was brushing carol’s crazy hair because they just took the braids out, and how they were praying that i’d be back by tomorrow. i told them i missed them and they needed to accept my facebook friend requests, and musonda answered “even us! we miss you. we will try internet, but not tomorrow because we have to go to town to get our hair plated.” carol was just laughing the whole time in the background and i could hear her saying, “see if she remembers how we were all just dancing even just this time last week together.”
i couldn’t believe i was talking to them. i can’t believe i’m not there anymore. i can’t believe they are just sitting in zambia, with the chickens sneaking into their kitchen and the mosquitos everywhere.
- me: what do you think the zambians are doing right now?
- todd: dancing, fulfilling the great commission and eating nshima.
It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.
” -found this from chels, and it totally sums up my entire summer in zam. love it. love the lord. love our mission.
Archbishop Oscar Romero (martyred in San Salvador in 1980) (via chelseakim)
trying to know if i take my hippie headband to africa or not. i think i do.
shut uppp.
Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense (via TED.com)
