Skip to main content

Questions

Recently our team (currently only a few of us here in Bundi) started listening to a sermon series together by a pastor in Virginia about the character of Jesus. This week we listened to Christ the Teacher and read John 3:1-17 where Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus.

In brief the sermon was less about the focus of Jesus being our teacher and more about our posture as believers - are we coming to Christ with a burning desire to know more, an appetite to ask questions, to seek Him as the good and trustworthy teacher? And when we do come near to Him with questions, are we content with just his nearness and trusting his sovereignty? We often won’t be told the answers -just as Nicodemus was only presented with more questions from Jesus - but we can rest in his company and that is ENOUGH.

Wow - what a precious reminder that growth comes from humility and recognizing that we don’t have all the answers and we NEED Jesus. How sweet that we serve a God that doesn’t ask us to be uber intelligent or confident but instead, we are called to humbly ask questions, recognize that He is the source of truth, and rest in his nearness with or without answers.

For us, right now in a new place where we have many questions - why does this happen, why does this person suffer in this way, how can we help here without hurting… It is peaceful and comforting to know that we can sit with Jesus and be satisfied by his presence. We are brought near in the questions. It is sometimes that simple. And we are grateful.


“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” -CS Lewis


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day 32 - How grief changed me

 I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts.  I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years.  In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work.  First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “...

Settling

Last Monday, Jan 21, we left Kampala around 9am and headed west to Bundibugyo. At this point, all we had seen of Uganda was Kampala (lots and lots of cars and bodas) and a short ride of forest/open areas between Kampala and Entebbe (which we drove on the new bypass road and that felt like we were on an American Highway for a hot second!). So getting out of such a densely populated area sort of felt like leaving Harrisonburg on the Friday after JMU finished for thankgiving break - awful traffic getting on 81 and then finally you get to a point on the highway where there are very few cars around and you can breathe again! The view was breath taking - rolling hills of banana trees or eucalyptus or cassava. Of course the occasional matatu (taxi van with 20+ passengers and way too much luggage on top) or boda would pass by....or we would pass a herd of cattle. But overall, it was an open road. We got to Bundi on Monday evening, greeted by the Carrigan kids (another family on the mission...

Arrival

We arrived on Saturday evening, the 12th. All but one bag made it to Entebbe (five out of six is pretty good) and the last bag arrived a few days later via boda boda (motorcycle). It was dark when we flew in so we did not get to see much of anything (besides the loud clubs and street vendors) until we woke up on Sunday morning and the view was beautiful! Actually we were up at 4am (jet lag) but when the sun came up it was quite peaceful. It was a cool morning, we ate breakfast at our guest house and sat on the porch and watched birds - so peaceful!  We have spent this week in Kampala and two nights in Entebbe, getting adjusted to the time difference, visiting places we will come back to during our resupply trips, and having time to do some culture and Serge orientation before we get to Bundibugyo.  Guest House #1 - Adonai House  Guest House #2 - Guinea Fowl   Dinner at Faze 3 overlooking Lake Victoria - where we celebrated Malac...