Back to Kenya

June 10, 2010


O God, what am I doing on this airplane? I honestly can't answer the question. What is it about me that I think is so special that my presence is required on the other side of the planet? I want so badly to serve You faithfully in Your Kingdom, to minister to Your hurting children and, in some small way, to help heal this broken world. But, I ask You again, what am I doing on this airplane? What is it that I, personally, am going to do in Kenya that is worth a $2000 plane ticket, running the risk of leaving my children fatherless, missing two weeks of their childhood, and leaving my wife crying in the airport.

Will I employ my unparalleled medical acumen to heal the lame or give sight to the blind or bind up the wounds of victims of inter-tribal violence? Well, no. In fact, I'll probably have to beg the Kenyans to take me to the hospital when I come down with some nasty stomach bug and start spewing from both ends.

Am I going to share with the locals my vast knowledge of agriculture and construction as well as my proven techniques for caring for orphans in a developing country? Well, not really. I don't actually know anything about those things. And I'm just going to eat their food and drink their expensive sodas and sleep in their own beds that they so graciously surrender to me in truly miraculous displays of hospitality.

Am I going to speak to them words of peace and healing, and comfort their hurting hearts? I can't even speak the children's language. And even if I could, I know so little about their lives and their pain and their hunger and what it's like to live in their shoes, that I would be a miserable minister of peace.

And as I have already observed first-hand, Kenya is not lacking good people who are willing to give of themselves much more sacrificially than I am in order that Your hurting children may find life and hope. They already know what to do; they don't need me to show them. And I am blessed beyond measure to be given the opportunity to participate with You and with my Kenyan brothers in this Spirit-led ministry.

They know their roles in Your Kingdom, and I am supposed to know my role, too. They cook the chickens and grind the grain and build the buildings and care for the widows and make clothes for the orphans. They teach the Bible lessons and deliver the babies and bury the dead and speak Your words of peace and healing. And ALL I have to do is to pray hard and to not be such a greedy, selfish jerk by wasting so much of Your money on myself that they all starve to death.

At home, my role in Your Kingdom is much more complex, but my role in this ministry to the widows and orphans of Kenya is exceedingly clear and simple: to be faithful in my stewardship of the resources You have blessed me with. And jumping on a plane to Kenya seems to violate the simplicity of my charge, because the truth of the matter is that the orphans and widows of Kenya would be none the worse if I stayed in Abilene, Texas and continued to support them from abroad.

So, look into my heart, Maker, and reveal to me its mysteries. Why am I really on this airplane? If we can rule out the fiction that I'm going to Kenya to help other people, then what does that leave? Am I just going for me? And why would my heart permit me such a luxury at such a cost? What is it that I really want from this trip? And is my will in harmony with Yours, or do I just deceive myself.

O God, gently peal back the many layers of self-deception that hide my motives from my own prideful eyes, and tell me what you see. Speak the truth to me that I am blind to.


Could it be that I am on this airplane to Kenya because I want to understand? I don't want to simply see or hear or know. I want to truly understand this country and its people and their struggles. I want to walk in the children's shoes for a few days and somehow experience and understand their world. I want to visit the orphans in their homes with their guardians. I want to walk to school with the children and cook and sew with the widows. I want to sleep in the places they sleep and eat the food they eat. There is another culture here that is strange and foreign to me and that doesn't fit neatly into my philosophical framework, and I want to begin to truly understand this culture so that I can find my place in it and engage it on its own terms.

I am very aware that I see the world through lenses that are tinted by my own culture and my own assumptions. I see the world as I expect to see it, and I interpret its hurts and its joys in the light of my own cultural expectations.

But I don't want these lenses; I want You to break them. I want to understand the world as it really is. I want to see the world as You see it, and I want to see people as You see them. I want to love people the way You love them, selflessly and unconditionally. I want to rejoice at the things you find joy in, and I want my heart to break with Yours. I want to learn to see joy in the midst of poverty and to see pain and despair even when it lies behind a veneer of affluence. I want to learn to find strength in weakness, and to find healing in brokenness.

But it's so hard. Kenya is just so different from Texas. The languages are different, the cultures are different, and on top of all that there is this staggering wealth gap, this enormous disparity in the standard of living. And all these things blind me from seeing the
truth that You see so clearly. You see into the hearts of the people; You see their grief and their joy and their desires and their heartaches. But my eyes aren't as keen as Your's and I have a very hard time seeing past the poverty and finding the heart of the person on the other side.

So, I think I am sitting on this plane to Kenya because deep inside of me I am expecting You to use this trip to mold me and teach me, and to begin to change my eyes to see the world as You see it and to love people as You do. Anyway, if that isn't actually Your plan, I'm several miles above the Atlantic Ocean right now, and it's a little late to tell me otherwise. So, I am going to need You to come through for me once again and redeem my foolhardy decisions for Your glory. But I have found that You are so, so good at that.

Amen.