In The Middle of It

Well, we're not back up at 100% yet, but we have some limited access to email, and with the help of our teammates, we are able to get on the internet at their house a few times a week.

I was at one of my leadership training meeting last night with Yaovi (yah-o-vee). We had a good meeting of about 3 hours long...studying in a hot and muggy mud hut by the light of a kerosene lantern. The squeals of young kids, cries of a million babies, the annoying sounds of goats (sorry goats), and the constant interruption of the curious chickens wanting to come in and find out what we were doing. That was our study environment. Rather humorous as we were working through some leadership training materials we got from Canada...one of the lessons talks about creating an ideal study environment conducive to maximum learning...things like: "a well lit room", "cool and comfortable temperature", "silent", and "free from distractions." These are luxuries of Western education and study habits! When you live your life, like Yaovi, in the middle of the active African village, "privacy" is virtually an unheard of concept. Aja people have their own needs for private time, but it is different than ours. They also I think have developed a remarkable ability to block out alot of those "distractions" and just concentrate better than me.

As I was driving home about 11p last night, I was scanning my short wave radio in my truck...sometimes late at night we can pick up the BBC or Voice of America stations on the radio...most of the time the stations are all in French, African dialects, or some other language. I was pleasantly surprised when the scanner stopped on an English speaking voice. Sounded familiar to me, but I could never place the voice and in the short time I listened never heard the man's name identified. Apparently some Christian musician and song writer (at least he talked at length about "God's faithfulness" during his live conversation). I was struck by a thought he shared.

He talked about his marriage of almost 30 years and how, because he and his wife married young, they encountered lots of problems (communication related). He also related a number of generic mentions of traumatic moments with their children and a number of other trials in his life. He then introduced a song called "The Promise." The song, written by this man to his wife, reflects not only his personal commitment to his bride, but also the covenant faithfulness of our God.

I was intrigued by one line that led off the chorus....it said something like:"Here we are in the middle of what we know is just the middle"

The play-on-words heightens our awareness of the reality that when we walk through life with the promise of a faithful God and a faithful spouse, we can truly rejoice when we have trials (God's Word tells us that, right?!)....because we know that in reality, the crisis at the moment will pass and the faithfulness of God will present us new opportunities for praise and blessing...perhaps not in our timing, but we know it is a reality. Even in death, we know that if we are in Christ, we will live again! So truly, in the middle of ANY time of trial, persecution, hardship, depression, or hard time, we can thank God for His faithful presence and His promise...because we are truly just in the middle of it! If the goodness and mercy of God follows us all the days of my life, I can know that in a moment of testing, I am in the middle of it!

Hope that encourages your day. It gave me a new thought.

Our God is faithful!
Randy