Sustenance, Safety, and Significance: giving them up for Lent or forever?

 One day this week, Scott was gathering supplies for fixing Christ School's broken pieces and deteriorated problems. A phrase I read in Isaiah for the beginning of Lent came to mind: you will be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell in. That's Scott's groove, repair and restore, re-settling scraping doors, repainting peeling walls, finding solutions for trash or for water run-off, remaking an unusable stove or rehanging a broken gutter. The reality is that people leave and moth and rust do corrupt and thieves do break in and steal, so those who stick around have some non-glamorous work. He sorts through barrels of nails and screws for the right one, talks to curious people in the market, does small experiments to see what works. Sustaining a school is no joke, or a team, or an Area. Or a wife. We constantly feel needy, for so many things.

While he was scouring town for supplies, I was walking up the road in the mid-day sun, the dry embers of a rain-deprived season that has left even our jungle crunchy, hazy, parched. I had come past the old airstrip, marvelling at the hours we used to spend hauling the mower and meeting planes, grateful for the road now but a little sad to see the encroaching gardens confirming the end of that small-plane era. Once upon a time, that airstrip was a lynchpin of our safety.  (Today is son #2's 28th birthday, and he made it to a term delivery partly in thanks to the fact that we were one of the early flights out of here to deliver at Kijabe). So may memories of this airstrip during ADF attacks, during Ebola. A mile later I happened to be passing a village that is difficult to recognise now with the pavement and bridges and change, but I remembered the many times I had followed up on a little girl who lived there, K. Grace. She was my patient for some years whose rare neurological infection made her limbs and voice spiral out of her control, but did not dampen her spirit. She had a family that managed with some nutritional help and support of a padded chair to keep her in school, which she loved. Her life was short, but I'm still glad to have been part of it. But sobering to raise kids in a place that needed an airstrip and that had dangers like Grace encountered.

Yesterday we were in Fort Portal getting car work done, and while we waited we walked up to Mountains of the Moon. This used to be almost the only place in town to order food, which took hours to prepare, but we would come and open our mail from the post office and the kids would chase a ball around the grass while we sat reading the letters and the staff no doubt scoured around town to find the one or two items on the menu to prepare. Decades later, the grass and porch remain but the whole place has received a major upgrade, and the road nearby has offices for Dutch and British and Irish government assistance, Baylor's AIDS project. Dozens of non-African organisations now base their work here, choosing the pleasant climate and order and convenience of this spot. The area carries an aura of significance, of people with money and skills that make things happen, people in the know. I have to admit that looks tempting, the climate and the tea and the respect. 

These three little moments do have a relationship, besides occurring within a couple of days. Fixing broken things and people still take up many hours of the days, struggling to sustain ourselves and our work. Listening, researching, making decisions, helping with referrals, we still spend lots of energy on the safety of people we care for. And the increasingly tedious piles of administration usually done from a 90+ degree home office don't always feel significant, but we do try to make a difference.  Those seem like good goals.

Jesus started his ministry with 40 days in the wilderness, and the Lent readings start there too. Not straight to the seat of power, but out to the rough edges. This time reading through the temptation narrative it struck me: how reasonable to ask God for sustenance (turn these stones to bread), for safety (send angels to catch the fall), for significance (let the people respect the good you're trying to do).  I certainly pray for those things. It's not like the tempter was trying to lure Jesus into an orgy or to benefit from drug money. Food when we're hungry, a barrier from harm when we slip and fall, success in our realm of influence. If this was any normal Kingdom, that's exactly the kind of wins we would expect to be promised. They all sound good, and indeed they all can be good. But Jesus didn't take any short cuts to Heaven. He held onto the paradoxical way of the cross. Even at the beginning he was choosing a lonely counterintuitive path that would require death to bring life. He said no, to the quick fixes of bread, of help, of power.

So as we now are a week into Lent, and almost 30 years into this life, and we have to keep asking for God to mercifully give us what we need not what we want. To choose Him over sure-fire success in being established, safe, recognised. To walk with Jesus through this wilderness of uncertainty and hardship, trusting that even hunger, danger, and obscurity will be redeemed for good. Not going to pretend we have that down pat in spite of all the opportunity to practice. Still need grace.

Just one Happy Birthday photo to end with . . .