from February 23, 2008 on my Typepad blog…
February 23, 2008
Constantly “in process”
While relaxing on the couch today, I’ve been reading my old blogs and journals and contemplating the times in my life that were parallel learning and growing experiences to life right now for us. I cringe reading some of the things I wrote. But I’ve left the past posts in tact (although very tempting to change them) because it also shows me “in process”.
Much of the following is a response to my post Life After Africa from last year. That post is parallel to much of the limbo and unknown I feel today in my heart although the experience of going to Africa, for me, was far more changing to my world-view than the current situation we’re in. As I read this, one particular statement stands out to me that has changed within my heart.
TRULY, it is us who needs them. To experience their way of life and then return home to make sense of why we do the things we do. To think or re-think each step we take, every holiday, every birthday. To understand how we can learn from other cultures and friends. It was us who needed to feel the impact and the value of every plastic bag or every empty bottle of water which our African friends considered gifts. It is us who needed to accept a meal from our friends knowing they were giving us all they had.
It is us who needs African friends living in America who willingly sacrifice, without question, every spare dime they make to send back to their families still in Africa. Not storing up their riches in IRA’s or savings accounts, but living for eternal riches, giving all they have. It is us who needs to be free of American thinking so that we can see and recognize truth and sin as it is and not be confined within our ideas of right and wrong which may or may not align biblically but have been how we’ve always done it.
