See Something More

Clean, pressed, empty pages. The smell of a new book. A soft leathery cover without creases and folds. A new journal.  Opening it feels like opening a new chapter in life. Putting the pen to paper is like starting something new. If you are seeking a fresh start, just get a new journal.  The day that I opened my new journal, I just so happened to read Matthew's call in Matthew chapter 9, and it jumped off the page at me like the theme of this new journal and this new season.  You see, I want to follow Jesus, but I also want to know the plan. I want to know where we're going and what we will do there and where we will go after that. I want to anticipate the difficulties ahead so that I can avoid them. As he leads, I find myself peeking over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of the path ahead. But that's not what following is. Following is taking his hand and following wherever he goes without knowing the way, putting my feet in his footsteps, keeping in s...

I think Africa is rubbing off on me. Because I absolutely love having visitors.  Hospitality may be one of the most prominent cultural values that I have noticed among the dagara people. At least it's the most striking and touching to me. They love to have people over. Take some of my teammates for example, who on more days than not have someone staying at their house - a grandmother or aunt, a pastor from another village, the son of a cousin who has come to our town to go to school, or a young couple newly married that are passing through town on their way to see friends.  Not only do they love to open their homes, but they also show hospitality in the food they share. A meal is always prepared with enough in mind for guests, just in case someone pops in at dinner time and needs to eat. In the United States, it would be considered impolite to show up at someone's house around dinner time unannounced. In Burkina, it is never impolite to be an unannounced visitor; in f...

One of the things I absolutely love about dagara culture is how they utilize rooftop space. Out in the village, they create sturdy roofs by coating the wooden support beams made from tree trunks with layers and layers of thick mud. This allows them to climb up on their roofs and use the space to dry grain, shea nuts, peanuts, or other crops that they don't want the animals to get. They also sleep on the roof tops in the hot season because it's cooler up there. In the oldest times, their ancestors used the vantage point to look out for any danger or invaders coming their way.  The village roof top thing has also made it into the city. Even though many people don't live in mud brick homes in the city, they still design the more modern homes to have a roof top terrace. Our new house has one, and it makes for a great place to eat dinner, spit watermelon seeds, watch the sun set, or scope out the neighborhood.  I've gotten a pretty good idea of the layout of the nei...

A whole week has gone by and it feels like I haven't written in a while. Sometimes I have a streak where so many things are happening that I could post a blog every single day, and other times, I sit here and stare at the screen wondering why a whole week has gone by and I can't think of anything to write about.  I just finished a great book, The Will of God as a Way of Life by Jerry Sittser, that challenged my thinking about God's will. I used to think of God's will as the plan he has for my future, a path that I must seek out and discover. However, the Bible actually says relatively little about the will of God as a specific future plan, but rather refers to how we ought to live in the present moment. The will of God is therefore something to be understood and obeyed in the here and now, not something to worry about in the future.  One chapter specifically addressed the routine aspect of our daily lives, you know, the dishes to wash, the clothes to fold, the ...

As the plane touched down on Burkina soil, I smile spread across my face. Even though I felt like it was 4:00am and I hadn't slept but four hours in the past twenty four hours of travel, I was excited to be in this place again. It becomes more and more familiar to me each time I land, yet each arrival is a new season of adventure and ministry. This is the home away from home that God has given me, and as Chris Tomlin sings, "The boundary lines have fallen in welcome places."  The next day brought me to our small town, where a new house awaited me and my visitors for the next three weeks, Daniel and Rachel. We arrived late in the evening and opened the door to a house that still needed much work to be comfortable, but after plugging in the fridge, making the beds, and finally eating dinner around 9:00pm, all was well and we broke out the guitar and gave the house a proper initiation with our voices in songs of praise. May this place be a house of worship, prayer, mini...

When everyone is pulled over on the side of the road, looking out their windows with binoculars, you pull over, too. That's the first rule you learn in National Parks 101 because it means that somebody has spotted something that you don't want to miss.  We parked the car, hopped out, and approached one of the people pointing and staring out into the forest of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "What do you see?"  "It's a bear with two cubs!"  My family came over to this side of the park on this particular day for that very reason - the possibility of seeing a black bear. What you must also know is that my mother always prays on these family adventures for extraordinary wildlife to "cross the road in front of us". We joke about it as a family, but God must laugh with us too because he frequently answers it. We have some pretty crazy wildlife stories to prove it.  So mom prayed up a black bear, and a mama with cubs at that....