Friendship and Africa

Friendship and Africa - #1

I believe that God is teaching me to be a friend, and in that way, opening a door on my friendship with him as well. In my opinion, the fact that I flew halfway around the world to see some friends says a lot about my values. Some people seem to be a bit awkward with this bit of information, for while it seems totally acceptable to spend vast amounts of money and time touring the world and that is thought of as adventurous, using your resources to visit some exotic place mainly to invest in people and relationships instead of seeing the sights just seems sentimental or needy or I don’t know what people assume it is. Frankly, I don’t care. I was privileged to live with a family for two-and-a-half weeks and have lots of good conversations and get to know them better by listening and watching and playing and eating together and seeing what adventures and challenges they face in their adopted, temporary country. I feel I gained much more than I gave (they gave me non-stop nutritious meals, regular swimming lessons, introductions to their friends, taking me along on jaunts around town, arranging day trips, praying for me, going shopping with me, and in general, taking good care of me in a strange land), but I pray that in some way they are richer as a result of my visit and know how much being in their home as an honorary family member meant to me. Their acceptance and love remain the highlights of my trip.

I was also privileged to stay with another family for 4 days that I did not know very well at all. They, too, embraced my presence wholeheartedly and offered that unique combination that I love so well: accepting me while challenging me to try new things. Though our time together was shorter and not as profound, I felt the weight of God’s hand on several conversations and encounters and I hope that I cross paths with these folks again.

Whether we live in Africa or Canada or anywhere in the world…the main struggle in relationships is how close will we let people come? How much will we trust? How much of ourselves are we willing to show? How far out on a limb will we go for one another, especially if we do not know them that well? The example is clear: while we were strangers, God died for us. Let me offer my heart and life just as freely – that is the greatest gift I can give.

Comments

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become. Besides, I have studying to do. But this weekend, something changed. I read the book of Esther. First, some background: the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years). Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs. This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments. It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ C...

outWORD by Matte Downey

Search This Blog