I can’t quite believe that I’ve been in Zambia for almost two months. Time does strange things here; it’s flown by, but at the same time it feels like forever ago that I was in South Africa.
I’ve been thrown out of my comfort zone yet again, and had the opportunity to serve this community in ways that I certainly didn’t see coming when I touched down in Ndola.
Here at Kachele, we’ve just finished a three week period of prayer and fasting. It’s been an incredible time of coming together as a community and humbling ourselves before our heavenly Father.
I don’t even really know where to start with what God has been teaching me over the last month, but I’m going to try, because it’s important. So I’m just going to ask that you’ll have grace with me as I try to express it in my clumsy, awkward words.
I started off the period expecting that God would move in my life, and the lives of those I live with and love dearly. And if the testimonies that have come out since are anything to go by, He certainly did. Over and above anything we could have dared to dream.
There’s a beautiful scripture in Jeremiah 33 that says if you call on the Lord, He will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things. Not that He might, or He’ll answer you if He feels like it, but He will. All you have to do is cry out. Our heavenly Father is just waiting for His kids to speak out. I’ve been floored again by how incredible that promise is. That tiny, insignificant me has the audience of the Creator of the Universe, and He’s concerned about the little things that are bothering me.
God has been challenging me about love, and where my comfort is. There are so many times over the past few weeks that I could have been overwhelmed. But time and again I’ve been reminded of how much I need God’s grace to pick me up when I fall down and to gently remind me that He is my safe place, my comfort, my home. I think it’s Spurgeon that said you only truly know that God is all you need, when God is all you have.
I read this beautiful piece by Henri Nowen, about the shift from solitude to community to ministry. He makes this incredibly eloquent argument that it is only when we truly embrace our identity as God’s beloved child that we find peace and comfort. We finally can forgive those who weren’t able to love us as we needed them to, and to forgive ourselves for the times when we couldn’t love others as we would have wanted.
As Christians, almost all of us are going to be familiar with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. You’ve probably heard it at a wedding at some point. It says “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” But how often do we stop to think about what this kind of love actually looks like? It’s the kind of love that lifts you out of the darkest places, that gently shines a light on those things you’d rather were hidden. That says ‘I want what is best for you, even if it’s going to cost me’. The kind of love that God has for his children. And the kind of love we’re called as his children to strive for in our own lives. So I’m trying, and I’m very aware of how often I fall short of loving like that, even when I so desperately want to. But in the meantime, as God calls me out into the great unknown, He is speaking gently to me and restoring what has been broken.
