Missionary Listening To the Earth

It is a bountiful autumn day. The sky is bright blue. The grass still glistens a brilliant green in the crisp fall air. The landscape is splashed in spectacular red, yellow, orange and rust by the great Master Painter. Overwhelmed by such beauty, I cannot but turn to the Creator God in praise and joyful celebration.

Just now as I look out the window two arrogant blue jays land on the feeder, greedily grabbing the choice seeds while scattering the less delectable to the ground to be gleaned by the smaller less aggressive birds. My thoughts immediately go to the peoples of Africa, to the impoverished and exploited millions in the developing world who are forced to survive, if survive they can, on the less desirable leftovers from the rich tables of the West. As I muse, I hear distant flocks of geese gabbling their way South in strung-out V’s led by wise old ganders, thus allowing each of the great birds to have an unobstructed view forward. These splendid honkers fly free, just as their Lord made them to be, searching for a better life in the more difficult days ahead.

Having been back in the States for some months, I experience tension in attempting to live in two very different worlds. Africa and her peoples have taught me so many, many more things than I could ever have presumed to teach them. They taught me the joy of discovering what I could live without. Many times each day something cries out inside me: “Simplify, simplify!” And I yearn for an experience of a deeper reality.

The peaceful blue sky, the gently falling leaves, the scampering squirrels getting ready for the long winter, the trusting abandon of the migrating birds convince me that life could be much happier by embracing a more simple way of life. Is that not the fundamental message of God’s creation: “Let it be”?

It is true, of course, that we must spend our lives in search for the wherewithal of life. But so much of what we give our lives and minds and hearts to, in truth, bring little real happiness. So much is sacrificed to convention (What will others expect of me? What is acceptable social behavior? What is the latest fashion?) , and so much is sacrificed for effect (Will this make me look good? Will that help me to the top?) So much we work for eventually enslaves us. Time is too short, we say. Yet these are the very things which steal our time and our thoughts and our hearts from the things that are vitally important and enduring. The more we are surrounded by walls and boundaries, the farther we move away from creation. Losing touch with creation means losing the desire for quiet reflection. Africa has taught me how God’s gracious gifts of nature provide us a joy far exceeding the imbalanced load and onerous responsibility of possessions that isolate us from creation and from one another. We are so sure that tomorrow the sun will rise that we fail to welcome it with reverence and joy when it does. Just because it is there we pass it by and perversely deny ourselves. Do we only feel gratitude when we feel the obligation?

One morning I was walking down a path near my compound in Mkendwa, Kanyakwar in Western Kenya, when suddenly I was surrounded by a cloud of unbelievably gorgeous butterflies. Gently I reached out to capture a particularly lustrous turquoise-black-orange “flying flower”, wanting only to possess it for a moment. At once it occurred to me that nothing is gained through possession. I realized in that instant that what belongs to everyone belongs to no one. I thought how foolish we are to look at what pleases us with more regret than pleasure because we do not possess it. When we do possess we imagine that we are satisfied. I had learned in that simple experience that the spirit of delight is as intangible as the iridescence brushed from the wings of the butterfly I had tried to possess.

Oftentimes friends wondered how I could endure the loneliness of so many years in Africa. Yes, I often felt lonely, but I quickly found that I could renew myself in solitude with creation. How is it possible to feel lonely in one’s own element? The same warm and understanding earth from which I am made and to which I will return belongs as well to the trees and flowers and animals who are my blood brothers and sisters. We all live together under the same sky, warmed and rejoiced by the same sun, loved and redeemed by the same God.

How well Africa has taught me that in the beautiful works of creation around me I am close to life and death, to reality that is sane and simple. Africa has taught me that until I have simplified my life and found out by myself what is truth for me, I will always remain on the edge of it. I have learned too that to live on that edge is really the greatest loneliness.

There is a saying often heard in Africa: “God is there in every creature”. The Book of Job, written some six hundred years before Christ, says it like this:

But now ask the beasts to teach you,

and the birds of the air to tell you;

Or the reptiles on earth to instruct you,

and the fish of the sea to inform you.

Which of all these does not know

that the hand of God has done this?

In his hand is the soul of every living thing,

and the life breath of all humankind.

(Job 12:7-11)