It was a Saturday morning on top of Pigs Peak, Swaziland. The clouds were so low, or rather the mountain so high, that when I walked out the front door I couldn’t see but ten feet in front of me. Lydia and I were going for a run through the hilly, uneven roads outside of the El Shaddai property that morning. I knew what a great morning it would be – a run in the fresh, mountain air with a squad leader who was so full of joy and energy.
We set out and began conversing about life, the Race, what we did before the Race, etc. As do many conversations here on the Race, ours turned to the vast possibilities of where the Lord is directing us after the Race is all said and done. Lydia shared with me her exciting dreams and aspirations and the way the Lord took the drivers seat in all of it. I then began sharing a few of the dreams the Lord was beginning to grow in my heart as we decided to walk up the biggest hill in the world (seriously, that hill though; even the vans have a hard time getting up it.). As we climbed our way to the summit of the hill, we started running again, and the conversation kept on the direction of “after the Race.” Just then, Lydia and I saw two shepherd boys come running down the street with their smiles as wide as a steer and their arms outstretched as though they we were some prize possession they must grab hold of. I’ll never forget their giggling as they approached nearer and nearer.
They jumped into our arms and wrapped their little noodley limbs around us. Our conversation stopped and we tickled them, swung them around, and asked them simple questions. Through their belly laughing and wormy squirming, they loved on us. They probably didn’t even know they were loving on us, honestly. But it was through the sharing of their genuine, simple life for 3 minutes that Saturday morning that I felt more love than most other encounters on the Race thus far. Sharing the laughs and smiles and tickles and squirms with those two little shepherd boys was priceless.
What was beautiful about this moment, looking back now, was the way they brought us back to reality. Here we were, talking about the future and what we imagine could be next to in our lives, and these two brought us down to earth, down to the present moment we were in of Saturday morning, April 18th, 2015, around 8:45. They ushered us into the joy and the delight of the day we were in rather than the ideas and visions of the future we can only hold so tightly to (not that we shouldn’t plan and think about the future!). This moment was such a sweet and tender reminder that the hour we have now is all we are guaranteed.
The simplicity of love from a hug and giggle and tickle of a Swazi shepherd boy brought me nearly to tears. I hope never to get so caught up in planning for the unpromised future that I miss the simplicity of joy and love that are in the present moment. I hope to embrace more shepherd boys even when I’m covered in sweat and they smell like, well, shepherd boys. I’m sure that our stenches combined were like a beautiful fragrance to God as His gaze locked on us and His smile grew even wider than ours.
