God Watching

 I sat in my van heading out of our driveway, car stopped, bird poster on my lap that I had scrambled to retrieve and eagerly observed beaks, feather colors, and tails.  One little village weaver caught a bug right in front of my windshield as I clapped and smiled like a child seeing a magic trick for the first time.  I was mesmerized. 

I have always thought it was sweet, and a bit odd, watching people walk around with binoculars in hand trying to see evasive birds.  A bit of a waste of energy when so much of God’s creation you can get up close to, like a spider web, or treasure from a distance, like a red African sunset.  I don’t know what sparked it, but I decided we were going to study the birds around us in school.  I got mini posters printed for each child, and we made a wall graph in our classroom to chart what birds we’ve seen.  We went to the bird reserve at 6am and 7:30 two different days in the same week.  One day we sat outside eating our lunch under the mango trees, and a blue flycatcher landed on the branch above us.  Acacia said, “Mommy, see that bird!” How many lunches have we eaten under those trees, oblivious to the birds.  Now, we see them everywhere.  I drive down the road, and a bird fliess in front of me, and I want to know what kind it is, what it eats, where it lands.  My children call out from their desks, window seat, and come running in the house to tell me about the birds they saw. I hear a bird call outside and I rush to the window to see who that beautiful voice belongs too. 

"See the birds of the air, they do not sow nor reap nor store up in barns, but your heavenly father feeds them." (Matthew 6:26) Hmmm, yes indeed. Jesus pointed people to the birds too.  But not for the sake of bird watching, but of God watching. "Fix your eyes on things above, not on earthly things." (Hebrews 12:12)  Have you ever had the experience that you read a verse in the quiet hours of the morning, and your heart clings to it, and then, all day, it applies to everything? We are now noticing the birds because we have decided to fix our eyes on them.  We have decided to know their various characteristics and names.

There is a hamerkop nest is behind us in the tree to the left.

  God invites us to do that with him, and then...to see him everywhere.  At work in the big and little, our God wants us to focus our attention on him because that is where we will find hope in a dark world, life and victory when defeat feels inevitable, and joy in the ordinary.  

 Now I'm one of those sweet, odd people who reaches for my binoculars every other minute while I walk along outside.  I also pray I'm that kind of person when I see God at work, recognizing and delighting in him, longing to get a closer look at his beauty.  

So Far From Home

I bought apples.  

This doesn't sound like a big deal, but I only buy apples, shipped here from South Africa, on special occasions and yesterday was one of those.  Lydia, who had spent two nights in the hospital, was coming home. 

Today, as I was cutting the apples, my mind flashed to mini me climbing the side of a tall wooden hay wagon as it passed under the apple trees in an overgrown orchard on our farm in Upstate New York. Then, unbidden, came memories of apple picking through the years. New York crisp autumn days, then in college with friends in Michigan, later with Mariama toddling behind me picking the soft ones off the ground, then pregnant with twins, pulling Mariama and Lydia in a wagon.  I thought, "I'm so far from home."  Those memories don't really make "home," but the joy of apple picking, a natural, sweet excursion with those you love, and promises of treats to come, is a delight that has echoes of home.  

Carrying the apples to my children, I looked around my house here in Nigeria, and the sense of being distant drifted as I knew that I AM home, building new memories with people I love.  We have mangoes hanging green, promising smoothies and sticky chins.  We have passion fruit flowers, their purple centers and delicate frilly white flowers, speaking of sticky, sweet yumminess sucked out through holes bitten by an eager child's little teeth. I hear exuberant shouts daily with the count of eggs that our new quail have laid that my children have collected and are running into the house to show me their camouflaged treasures. 

 

 All of this reflection reminded me that we are only ever as close or far away from home as we are close or far away from Jesus and the sweetness we experience in following him where he leads us. Following him leads each of us to worlds where we have echoes of eternity because he's there, bringing beauty even in pain, loss, and disappointment. Sometimes we experience the undeniable beauty through the evidences of himself he's left in a child's giggle or a setting African sun. 

 It brings a song to my heart sung by folksy, pop artist Josiah Queen (if you haven't listened to his songs before, you can start here): 

Hold on, wait a minute
I don't want what You ain't in, and
I don't wanna go unless I'm going there with You
It's You there, rain or shining
You're the sun on my horizons
You are my everything.   

My promised land is you. 

Home is defined by being with Jesus, so I'm never far away because, "I will never leave you or forsake you," and "I am with you always, even to the end of the age," were some of the last words he spoke to his disciples.  May we each experience the sweetness of "home" with him as we follow him where he leads.  And may he fill our aching loneliness for simpler, happier spaces where we found comfort in mother's arms or pleasure in our feet pressed into green grass or the exhilaration of taking off your soccer cleates after a match well played. 

May he draw our gaze toward the beauty in our midst that speaks of...himself...our promised land.

CV and Such

 I shout "I’ve been driving for 24 years!" 

When the recently-graduated-from-diapers 

Guard placed his hand 

Through the window of my Van

On my steering wheel 

To help me reverse, for real? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masters in Scripture Engagement

On the border of enragement

Why don’t they ask for my help? 

I stumble in the emotional kelp. 

Tying me up, as I want to prove 

I am not one to remove 

From the complicated equation 

Of a community engagin’ 

with Scripture

“I studied education"

So I have the qualification

See my kids are phenomenal 

Their minds and hearts full

Also studied the arts for kids

Hence the drama of the life cycle of aphids

Studied appropriate technologies

Agriculture n small animal husbandries

That’s where my yard looks likes mini model,

And the start-up petting zoo, minus the cattle. 

I’ve lived in West Africa for ‘bout 20 years, 

Learned Spanish, French, and Hausa in tears. 

Started an organization to help the less fortunate, 

Hundreds of kids on their academic journey set. 

I’ve written smashing musicals and plays, 

Invested selflessly on hot African days, 

Gone without water and electricity

All for the gospel, chosen simplicity. 

I can boast and I can brag, 

Give my self a nice hash-tag

But if all they see is me and what I do. 

If it does not bring joy to You, 

Jesus, I lay it down and call it for what it is. 

A wild flower, fading, Dr. P's vanishing fizz

I could write a lengthy CV

‘Bout my accomplishments and degree

Yet one thing is resoundingly true

It’s all rubbish compared to knowing you.