“Let’s get started – when the others come they will find us
on the way.”
I don’t know how many times I have heard this at informal Kasana
gatherings/meetings over the past year. Probably at least half a dozen.
It’s a common sentiment, stemming from “African time” – the
tendency of Ugandans and others to not be on time. If you’re at a place within 15 minutes of the assigned beginning time, usually you are early. ;) At
functions out in the village, if the stated start time is 10 a.m., that may be
when you leave your garden to go home and bathe before walking to the meeting –
you may get there at 11 and still be one of the first.
On Tuesday night I attended Vespers, an occasional evening
service that gives JBU students time to quietly reflect on passages of Scripture
which they read aloud together. It was the students who slipped in a minute or
two late to join the other students which made me think of my Ugandan friends.
Somehow then, my mind made a jump to spiritual matters. The
thought flashed through my mind that this is what every one of us has done. God
started history thousands of years ago. Every one of us living now have found
Him on the way. He has been working His plan and accomplishing His goals for
centuries and millennia before our parents (or great great great great grandparents)
ever thought of our existence. We all find Him on the way.
I couldn’t help but think a bit about what that means.
To go back to the illustration that started this train of
thought: Imagine that the meeting is one discussing an elaborate plan for how
to celebrate someone’s birthday. Then imagine that the person arriving over an hour after the official start of the meeting suddenly jumps in and starts expressing
her ideas about what ought to be done and how to do it. If the meeting has been
productive (also a Western concept – the first phase of a less formal meeting
in Uganda can often be visiting and catching up on one another’s lives), then
plans have quite possibly already been made – it’s just the details remaining.
I think it is easy for us humans to do something similar on
the grander spiritual scale. As we grow up, we start to have our own ideas
about things. By the time we are adults, we can have grand plans and Opinions
about the way things ought to be.
We feel like we are responsible for coming up with what we
do and what happens around us.
We forget that we joined Someone else on the way.
That He has His plans & will carry them out!
That HE is the one writing the story.
That it’s HIS story anyway.
Zachariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna: Each one
of them didn’t just find God on the way – they were caught up into a plan
grander than anything they could have imagined. Some had to be made to shut up
so that they would listen to the plan. Others accepted it with open arms,
though I’m sure they were blown away by the enormity of what they were hearing.
Each one didn’t set out to make something amazing of their lives; or maybe they
did, but it paled in comparison to what actually happened. Instead, they were invited
to join what God was already at work doing. They didn’t just find Him on the
way, He met them on the way and changed the course of their lives, and human
history, FOREVER.
Obviously, I don’t believe there will ever be something
exactly like that again. Never again will the eternal, omnipresent Son of God
choose to fully become a helpless baby. But I think we can still learn
something from this.
On a much more personal note, being here in Siloam has made
me think about the “me” that first moved here more than six years ago. An
Esther that thought she was going to be a political journalist. NEVER did that
Esther expect that six years later she would be looking at Uganda, a distant
country in Eastern Africa, as HOME for the foreseeable future. I had no idea
what God was going to do. But He invited me to join Him on the way; He worked
so many different things together in my life to grow me and stretch me and
envision me for something that I in myself would never have seen.
He has a plan that He put into motion thousands and
thousands of years ago. Each one of us finds Him on the way. But not because we
were looking for Him – He finds us and calls us to join Him on THE WAY. Because
it’s definitely not a journey we walk alone. We have the Godhead, each person
of the Trinity, willing and eager to walk with us and guide us each step of the
way. For Jesus said that He IS the way, the truth, and the life.
Come, let’s join Him on the way.
