(A letter to one of my best friends back at home)
It’s raining once again in Kenya. Every day around 2 pm, it starts to get dark and thunder groans begin to get louder and louder. Then fat drops of water suddenly appear and we all run to get our laundry off the line. It’s cold here, definitely not what I would expect since it’s Africa and we’re on the equator but it’s also the rainy season, and therefore, the wettest and coldest time of the year. This is when I grieve for my rain jacket that I accidentally left on someone’s coat rack back in November (oh Moldova…).
Kenya: you're beautiful
It’s month 11, and I cannot be more ready and yet saddened. Ministry this month is incredible: I’m living at Challenge Farm, a children’s home with 135 ex-street children. They live here, go to school here, and are loved on, all because an American woman, my contact Cheri, saw a policeman beating a three year old child once in the city, and began offering children a better place than the streets. Years and hundreds of children later, the farm is a place for children to be children and rehabilitated from the drugs, abuse, and street life that they used to live. These kids love Jesus so much because they truly understand what it’s like to be rescued from death! I would stay here forever in a heartbeat but God’s also not calling me here, so I go back home to America to simply love others in whatever way God tells me.
Look at these adorable faces. Then add 133 more and that's my life.
I’m doing great this month. Last month, I honestly struggled. I lost hope and lost sight of the cross. I gave up on my team, on going deeper with the Lord, and on any visions that I had for life. I felt obligated to love people and that made everything I did a struggle. When we feel like things are a requirement, it becomes impossible to do, especially when it comes to loving others. It’s like our life in relationship to God, when we are required to do anything by the Law, it kills us. But when we do it in simple and pure love, because we love the Father, not because we are indebted to Him, tasks like loving others becomes a joy and a delight. To do anything for the one whom we love.
So that’s where I am now. Remembering why I fell in love with Jesus in the first place. Returning to my first love. Huh. That’s what me and Jesus have been chewing on. The church in Ephesus, they didn’t fall away. They did well in the eyes of everyone around them, persevering for Christ, not tolerating those who did wicked deeds, all noble and honorable things. But they also forgot the Lord, forgot why they were doing all these amazing things: because they loved Jesus.
Like them, I forgot about living a life filled with passion and love for the Lord. Instead, I considered it another duty, another task to be completed to check off the I’m an awesome Christian checklist.
But I’m also done with that. What’s the point of searching out the good things of the Lord without seeking out the Lord himself?
So basically, all the Lord has called me to this month is to worship Him. Isn’t that what life is supposed to be about in the first place? That’s why we were created—to glorify Him in everything we do, whether it’s singing, dancing, painting fence posts or eating ugali (rough stuff). Nothing else matters but choosing to love Him every minute of the day. That’s what my heart longs for. To go back to the beginning. Not in the foundational stuff but the passion, the hungering to go deeper and farther with the Lord in ways like never before. To be intimate with Him. To return to my first love.
