Walkers.in.Africa

God is kind of like the Pacific Ocean

“I find it very funny when Christians act like they know so much about God Almighty. What was He doing two hundred million billion billion billion years ago? I don't know. What will He be doing in two hundred million million billion billion years from now? I don't know that either. There is a lot about God that we do not know, and when we act like we think we know so much it is kind of like ants trying to describe civilization in midtown Manhattan; they know there is something really big and out there, but it is really quite elusive and beyond them.

God is kind of like the Pacific Ocean I find. You know you can read about the Pacific but that is not the same as going to the edge and splashing around. Even if I go to the edge of the Pacific Ocean and I splash around in it, that doesn't mean that I know now ever breadth, depth and detail of the Almighty Pacific. I don't know what it is like all the way down to the sea floor and every layer in between, and I don't know what it is going to be like swimming across it to the other shore in China. There is a lot about the Pacific that I do not know when I'm splashing around the shore on the West Coast. Even if I am splashing there I can't go very deep, very far, for very long, because it is very much bigger then I can attempt to contain or control; it will overwhelm and sweep me away. About the best I can do with the Pacific is scoop up my little personal handful of experience and while there is a lot of detail I will not know out that scoop, I can at least assess the character of the Pacific accurately: It's wet and salty. And so in spite of all I do not know, this much I have assessed accurately about the Pacific, you follow my idea?

I think God is kind of like that, all the way to the bottom of the sea floor and all the way to the shore of China, the Pacific's character remains constant at least in those two regards: wet and salty. There may be much I don't know, that much I have learned. And so it is like this with God, there is a lot I don't know, He doesn't bother to explain, He doesn't ask us to find out. But at the end of the day in my walking with the LORD these decades I have taken out a little splash around scoop and I have learned that He is good and He is love. In fact He has earned back my trust and has proved that He is better then I initially would have thought when I first began this journey.”

-Sy Rogers

(Props to Sarah Kane for the picture. Thanks for some of my favorite memories Sarah <3)

I will live to carry Your compassion

The hot Africa sun is beaming through the cracks of the makeshift walls, the only source of light in the small dim shack. The woman opposite me shares her life story, her brown eyes and small smile offer friendship, her words share a situation of no hope. Even if her family was whole, even if she had a beautiful home and a regular paycheck, in the end her words would've still echoed a story of no hope. My listening ear and friendship are not enough. The Giver of Hope had freely given to me and now He was prompting my heart to share what I had freely received. She knew of God, she knew Jesus had come to this earth, died, and rose again . . . but she didn't know why. I pulled out my Bible and began to share the greatest, most mysterious, compelling love story of all time.

This is just one person, one story of the thousands of people in the squatter camps in Africa. There are countless stories that are yet to happen. Jesus is moved with compassion for people, is our hearts breaking for what breaks His? Is compassion true compassion if it does not compel us to do something? Jesus knew that this short time on earth was our only preparation for eternity. The Light of the World went to illuminant the darkness, the Giver of Life came to heal the sick. He said, “Follow Me” . . . “Go make disciples of all nations.”