3am: Roosters

In any other early pre-dawn circumstance, roosters making such an announcement of a new day would be met with fatigued, angry curses. But, I’m awake anyway. Wide awake. I’m awake in a timezone ten hours away. It’s late afternoon back home. But, despite all appearances to the contrary: monkeys roaming the trees like squirrels, impala and zebra grazing in the open green spaces, it’s really not a different world.

This is my second visit to the FEARLESS conference in Nairobi, Kenya. There are speakers and leaders from all over the world. I’m finding that the global church is in full bloom and God is at work in places and in ways I had never expected. And, I’m discovering something within me that may have been unknowingly destructive — something hidden in the subtlety of my language and thinking — that Africa is truly a different world. If Africa, like so many other places that are unfamiliar, or unknown, or even unwelcome, is a different world, it can be neatly categorized in a box labeled “not me.” The joys, triumphs, struggles, and dreams of people that live in the “not me” box don’t concern me.

Slowly, that kind of thinking — that particular kind of thinking that tends to grow and fester over time is eroded by the most familiar, often messiest, and most abundant resource available: relationships. To identify a personally known individual in any place (no matter how far away that place is), makes that place matter. Winter storms in Michigan or tornadoes in Oklahoma take on a different meaning when your relatives and friends live there. So, Kevin and Anthony, Agnes, and Muriithi, Winston, Miriam, Towella, and others I’ve come to know, make Kenya, no matter how distant, a place that isn’t a different world. It’s the place where my friends live…

…the roosters, too.

I’m excited for all that God is doing while I’m here in Africa. I can’t wait to see how it impacts what we’re doing at home in Southern California.

See you very soon,

Jeff