Giraffe Prayer

This week is the 4 year anniversary of our move to South Africa. It has been an eventful 4 years but when I think back on it now it seems to have passed very quickly. Robin and I are preparing to return to the USA in November for a furlough and have many details to take care of both here and in the US to prepare for our time there. But after the last very busy 5 months working for Genesis we realized we needed to take a break here and get away for several days to rest and refocus. So we spent this last week in two cottages, one in the southern Drakensberg mountains and one in the the bush of northern KwaZulu-Natal. Our time was very blessed as we were able to relax and refresh in the the beauty of God's creation. (Although there were a few harrowing moments, but more of that later.)

Over the years I've done a lot of traveling and seen a lot of the world but there is something about being in the African bush that touches you in ways that few other places do. This week we stayed in a small cottage ("lodge" when you're in the bush) in the Kuleni Game Reserve near the large Hluhluwe Game Park. There are about a dozen small lodges in Kuleni but other than driving to and from your lodge it is a walking only game reserve. Obviously they don't have lion, buffalo, elephant or other dangerous game in the reserve.

Late one afternoon as we were walking in the reserve we had seen several animals including wildebeast, kudu, warthog and several small antelope. But we were hoping to see some zebra and especially giraffe. As on other occasions when on game viewing outings ("safari" doesn't seem to fit the occasion), I prayed to God, "God it would be so cool if we could see a ... (giraffe in this case)" And then as on other occasions I've always felt a little weird about saying those prayers. Is that really something I should be bothering God about? I know the Bible says pray continuously but does that including asking God to fill up my "Big 5" list?

This issue was on my mind because it had been brought up as I was reading "Walking with God" by John Eldridge this week. In it he talks about having this moment by moment conversational relationship with God. That seemed so right to me but when he talked about hearing "fish" when praying to God about whether to go fishing one day or to do something else, it didn't set just right with me. Does God really tell people to go fishing (for fish, not people)? Yea, I know Christ told Peter to throw his net on the other side of the boat but that was about demonstrating who He was, not about a nice day of catch and release on the river.

Well anyway I said the prayer, feeling a little weird about it. Within 5 minutes as we walked up a gentle rise in the trail through grass and low shrubs I looked off to the right and saw the tall brown form of a giraffe in the distance. We put the binoculars on him and we could see his face turned and looking at us even though he was a long way off. We continued on the trail as it rose gently and turned to the right. A small herd of impala were feeding on the grass and quickly darted off as we approached them. As we turned the bend toward where we had seen the giraffe Robin said, "look there are 3 of them". I said "no look there is another over there and look there is also a young one behind its mother". In fact there were 6 giraffe including the youngster clustered around the path ahead.

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We were so blessed to be able to see these beautiful animals in their natural habitat, doing what giraffes do. They didn't seem to mind us being there. I believe God brought them to us to bless us. What I realized is that because I had prayed for God to bring us a giraffe, there was no way I could not give Him the credit. God wants us to pray to him about the desires of our heart, about the everyday issues like fishing because then He is revealed as the one in control of our lives. We rightfully have to acknowledge Him working in our lives. Otherwise we may be deceived into thinking things come our way by chance. There was no way we were going to come across 6 giraffes, right on our path by chance. Only by prayer. Thank you God!

Listening Back, Together

As most of you know, for the last 4+ months I have been serving as the General Manager of Genesis on an interim basis. As I've shared previously during this time I have struggled to contribute regularly to this blog. Why do we struggle so with things we are committed to? Maybe its because we are not as committed as we say we are. Or maybe something or someone else distracts us from our commitments (tries to change our priorities). That something could be something good (like serving others for me) or something not so good (like laziness and selfishness for me). That someone could be a friend, an acquaintance, or a foe (even The enemy).

I think it is a combination of all those things/people that has contributed to my struggle with the commitment I have to communicating through this blog. But I think there may be another even more important reason why I've struggled and why we often struggle with things we are committed to. And that is wrong thinking about the thing we are committed to. Sometimes we blame other things, especially busyness when the real problem is not thinking right about what we've committed to. In the case of sharing my faith walk with others through Slender Wires I've realized that I've been thinking wrong about what I should be writing in these posts.

Over the last months as I've been working at Genesis I've been surprised how much of my time is doing paperwork, sitting in front of the computer, dealing with emails, writing policies, responding to audits, developing budgets and fundraising strategies. All that stuff, so I thought makes for pretty boring reading. I said I wasn't blogging because I was too busy but really I wasn't blogging becuase I felt what I was doing and living day to day would bore people and not inspire or encourage them. I felt like I had to have an emotional story or something clever or profound to share in my posts. I did manage one what I thought was a pretty clever post related to something as boring as audits and doing accounts "I reckon" :).

Then this week I started reading Walking with God by John Eldredge. In it he says he's going to share of series of stories of what it looks like to walk with God over the course of a year. It's a goal that is similar to what I want to do with Slender Wires. And as he says, "How much more valuable might this be if we could share with one another the stories of our true encounters with God - not the mountain top ones, but the everyday encounters...". He also quotes Frederick Beuchner about writing an autobiography. Buechner says "... it seems to me that no matter who you are, and no matter how eloquent or otherwise, if you tell your own story with sufficient candor and concreteness, it will be an interesting story and in some sense a universal story..." . The mundane not the mountaintop is valuable when shared. My excuse of not having anything interesting to share was just that, an excuse and based on wrong thinking.

But why is it that the mundane is important to share. How does my telling the mundane everyday happenings of my life contribute to anyone else's faith journey. I think Buechner anwers that as well. "If God speaks to us at all other than through ... the Bible and the church, then I think he speaks to us largely through what happens to us... " . And if I am going to hear God speaking to me in this way I have to "listen back over what has happened to me" in the mundane times as well as the exciting times (partly because there are a lot more of them). And as I listen back to hear God in the everyday events of my life, you have the opportunity to listen back over what has happened to you. We find Buechner is right, our stories are universal. And maybe you and I will hear God together. Cool! Let's stay commited to sharing our stories.