Disillusionment can be such a gift – especially when it doesn’t lead you to cynicism, such as it often does. Humility, and so many other truths, often demands disillusionment. What else can dissipate those oh so well intended maxims of our early childhoods – the ones that so often build an ego that is only capable of crashing down later. How wonderful a disillusion when one realizes that no one culture can contain the gospel, truly understanding that the kingdom of God is so beyond what good infrastructure and available electricity may be in place. But the price of realizing the Kingdom is invisible and from God alone, bearing no flag and boasting no borders, is that I find myself craving for the presence of a Lord I so often cannot see and the presence of peace that evades so easily. One thing that amazes me is the omnipresence of God. I’m amazed because finding him can be so completely challenging. Even finding him in the stillness and carefully crafted silence can so often bring a sense of grasping for what can’t be grasped, squinting my eyes and ears for something without form and without sound.
The depths of human heart – the innermost courts of the Kingdom of God – so intimate and slippery a thing. The psalms speak over and over again about loving and pursuing God with your whole hearts, how ridiculous that’s seems in light of the how fractured my heart is and how little I know of it. And always the same issues exist for me: I’m in Africa talking about what is so much the same, so much the same questions still haunt me.
Would the comfort of an air-conditioned room and the 24/7 accessibility of movies and a surround sound stereo system erase my struggle with my spirit and the God it seeks after, sometimes so desperately, and sometimes so disparagingly? Jesus was sent from a place and has returned there, seated there even now. And so I have been sent, knowing so well and being so incessantly reminded of the pleasures and comforts I miss from the place I have been sent. The truth is that many times I can’t think of anything better than a cup of ice cream or an American pizza! But simply eating some ice cream or diving into a few hot slices of bread, cheese and pepperoni would not give me the home I desire. Family and friends are as close as home gets anymore, simply because I know even they cannot satisfy my heart’s deep homesickness. But I take heart knowing that home is in the God I have craved for even before I knew that I craved him. In this time in Africa I truly feel the weight of a pilgrim’s burden, the immutable urge to keeping taking steps to my destination: at the feet of my great Lord and King, Jesus Christ.
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