A few months ago our team lived right near the Maasai Mara game reserve in Kenya. It was an unbelievable month. We took in ridiculously good sunrises, awe-inspiring stars, and were greeted with more chai tea and chapatti than we could stomach on our trips out to villages (well, I usually found a way to stomach the hospitality). It was not until the end of the month when I realized lions and all sorts of other hair-raising animals lived about a mile away from where we slept at night…and was thankful for that late-arriving realization.
God spoke a number of sweet truths into my life that month, several of which came through kids, and yes, one of which came through, farts. One day as I was out on a prayer walk near our village, I was nearly jumped on by two little boys who came out of the bush. They had followed me all the way from our house without (me) realizing it. I have to admit that I was not particularly excited to see them—I was very much enjoying the time alone, and one can only be asked “what is your name?” so many times.
I continued on, with the kids in tow, straight across to the other end of town. Somewhere along the way I lost them (“why won’t the mzungu jump over small bushes with us and tip over every rock?” they probably asked in Swahili). But, right around the time I realized they were no longer there, I experienced the most touching moment: I looked up and one of the boys was running down the road, about a quarter-mile away, huffing and puffing once he finally reached me.
“God, what are you showing me here?” I asked as the boy spent the next minutes both walking with me hand and hand, and occasionally falling behind me to jump on a boulder or inspect a plant.
“I want you to be a little kid following me around. Go where I go. You’ll never be a pest to me. You can ask me my name all you want. Follow me as the son you are. Holding my hand. Looking into my eyes. Smiling and laughing with me. It’s a little awkward when someone follows a little distance behind you, no? Stay right alongside me.”
I was writing these words down in my journal the next day as I hung out in a first grade classroom, when the teacher’s son came up next to me and just stood looking at me. He giggled, scratched my arm hair, and showed me a picture he was drawing. It was only about 30 seconds later that I realized he wasn’t so innocent. Whatever that kid released out of his bum stung the nostrils, and left me plotting my revenge. I couldn’t help but think God was probably guffawing right along, him having created farts after all.
As I observed the kid for the rest of the morning, though, I realized something else: as the teacher’s son (and as she was a little too busy with the other rascals of the classroom who were a few years older), he was free to roam as he pleased, learn when he chose to, and sometimes draw on other students’ notebooks. There was no attempt to prove himself, or question of his mom’s love, or worry of his acceptance. He was so secure in himself—at rest, comfortable, joyful…so much so that he could come fart right next to the big, white foreigner, and escape without so much as a scratch. Being a son or daughter is not an excuse for laziness, or an opportunity to be a pest to other children around you or to take advantage of your status (and certainly not to fart at will); but it gives us ample space to roam in freedom, to rest secure, to walk hand in hand, to draw on God’s coloring book. This is the kind of son-ship that releases our inheritance.
