My motorcycle got a nice ride back to Nairobi on the DC-3.  I rode with Randy who had followed us down in a car. I think I need to explain a little bit about the Mombasa Highway.  It is a very narrow 2 lane road that runs from Mombasa to Nairobi.  Mombasa is not a huge city that generates a lot of traffic on its own. However, it is a port.  In fact, it is the port for a huge portion of Africa including all of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Eastern Congo, and much of Tanzania.  I realize this is not the most commercially active place in the world, but when you have one tiny road that is supplying everything for this whole region you can get an idea of what traffic can be like.  Also, since the police do not have many vehicles, and never use them to patrol, speed limits are very soft “limits.”

As we were almost home, nearing Nairobi about 15km south of Machakos, in the pitch dark we came upon a broken down container truck.  It was completely covering our side of the road, and as Randy went to pass he saw a large truck coming the other way.  So he quickly braked and we pulled in behind the broken truck.  The Land Cruiser behind us was moving very fast and not so aware of his surroundings.  He must have seen the truck coming the other direction at the last moment and turned into us to avoid it.  Somehow he missed our back bumper by less than an inch and impacted the right rear fender and bounced off the right rear rim which was destroyed.  Glass was thrown all over us, and as the impact began, I was certain we were going to end up as pulp under the container truck.

The laws of physics cannot be suspended for brief moments, but if I did not know better… somehow he squeaked through between the two trucks.  Then he slowed briefly before speeding off to Nairobi.  We never saw him again.  The four guys who were with the broken down truck came out to help us.  At least we know that now.  They could have easily been up to no good.  They changed out the spare and beat on the fender to try to give some clearance for the spare.

We were able to get the car back on the road, minus the instruments which quit working (but later started working again).  I looked over at Randy and said, “So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”  He smiled.

We made it without too much delay back into Nairobi.  Because of the mangled fender and lack of clearance on the tire, we crawled through any rough sections.

You do not need a near miss to know that God is sustaining you (but it helps!).  He always has a purpose, He could end it at any moment.  I now give you the opportunity to ask yourself, “So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

I taught from Hebrews 11 and the start of 12, and was really convicted myself.  I told them a story about when I was learning to drive.  I was going to Forest Home with my sister and her husband.  They asked if I would drive some of it.  So there I was, 16 at the wheel of a large van driving up the highway full of those very dear to me.  I spent so much effort trying to keep the van in my lane.  I kept adjusting the wheel this way and that, bouncing from one side of the lane to the other.  Then my sister said, “Do not look right in front of the van, look ahead where you are going.   Your hands will follow your eyes.”  Good advice, and not just for driving.  We spend way to much time adjusting the here and now, and we fail to “fix our eyes on Jesus,” and focus on where we are going.

I really love Kabete, I even told them it was “mahali ya moyo wangu” – the place of my heart.  (They are trying to teach me Kikuyu, but that is going very slow.)  There is something really different there.  It helps that it is outside the city, so on Sundays they go to church, that is the only plan.  In fact, just as we were all preparing to leave the church, the pastor’s daughter asked me if I was leaving.  I replied that I was “free” for the afternoon.  So completely on the spot, lunch at the pastor’s house was organized.  They roped in some ladies to cook and a couple of the elders to be guests.  It was good food too.

I got a report from Pastor Edward of the church in Soweto where I taught the last computer class.  We helped fund the certificates they gave out at an Inductive Bible Study seminar they gave near Voi.  They do these as outreaches to different parts of Kenya to teach pastors how to study the Bible.  All the money we have is by God’s grace and your support, so it was really you putting the smiles on these faces.  Well, some of them are smiling, Kenyans do not often smile in pictures, even when they are happy.

The other picture is from our computer class.  I really had fun doing that.  I feel very privileged to be able to use my skills for His Kingdom.

We had an Easter lily on Easter Day!  (Thanks to Grandma for giving us money to plant some beautiful flowers after our yard was torn up from the back wall falling down)

The drive shaft on the bus broke, which pitched the bus on its side and it rolled several times.  I have not been to Shinyanga, but I have been on a bus from Nairobi to Arusha and back.  If the speeds were anything like my trip 13 years ago, I can easily imagine the scene in my head.

Since I was committed Saturday, we missed a funeral for a young lady who was the younger sister of one of our worship singers at Umoja.  In church, her brother sat next to me.  There will be a funeral Tuesday in Kabete for a lady whose husband used to be an elder at Harvester’s Kabete.  They had since moved over to the church in Gachie to help out there.  Wednesday will be the funeral for an elderly lady at the Harvester’s Kianjogu, where I gave the Easter message last year.

There were many injured women at church Sunday.  Consolata , one of the women who has translated for me on more than one occasion was in a sling.  Stanley Kariuki’s wife was unable to come because he said she had trouble sitting for more than a few minutes.  Joel, one of the church elders, also tore some ligaments in his left shoulder.  All who were there Sunday got up at the end of the service and we prayed for their quick recovery.

There is still one woman in hospital.  She is up at Kijabe and in need of surgery to repair her leg.  They are currently raising funds to pay for the surgery.  We contributed towards it.  Actually we do not have any of our own money, so all of you who are supporting us, contributed to her surgery.

Living here has taught me a lot about culture.  One of the things I have learned is that almost everything we point to has a good side and a bad side.  One of the things they were keen to teach us at our orientation was how much of the outlook in Africa is fatalistic.  It is often seen as a bad thing, and that is understandable.  However, yesterday we experienced the good side of it.  There were no questions of “Why?”  Only an attitude of expectation, “How is God going to be glorified in this?”

Mungu ni mwema, wakati wote.

I went in with 5 laptops and an outline of what I was going to teach.  High up on my outline was to gauge the groups previous experience with computers.  Most of the computer use here is at cybercafes, where a cheap place runs at 1 shilling per minute.  50 shillings per hour is a fairly normal wage for unskilled labor, so the cyber costs more per hour than most of them can earn in the same time.  Out of 26 students, only one had ever touched a computer before.  I thought I might be in for a long day.

It was a great time for us all.  All were very eager to learn, and some picked things up really fast.  We rushed through the basics of interfacing with computers, menus, applications and documents.  Then we touched on the three big office applications; word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.  The second half of the class was dedicated to the internet.  It was great fun showing them blueletterbible.org and some other bible resources.  At the end of the day, I had most of them set up with an email account and asked them to send me an email.

I had not been looking forward to the long days of doing this, close to 1o hours, but when I got home I knew it had been a great day.  Cammy asked me how it went, and I replied, “It was one of those things I would never choose to do myself, so I am glad God made me do it.”  I sound like a boy I know, who I should post about.

Next week I will be on the other side of town near Kayole, in the Soweto slum teaching other students.  Perhaps when that is all done, I will post some of the best emails I receive.

Love requires a choice. Someone cannot be forced to love, they must choose it of their own will. Otherwise, it is not love.

God is omnipotent, the creator of everything.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  He is invincible.  What is there that He did not speak into being, and cannot speak out of being?  The idea that God is at war is ridiculous.

God desires that all men would choose to love Him (1 Tim 2:4), but He cannot force them, because of the nature of love.

That means that the battle for a soul takes place inside a man’s own heart, the only place that God has willfully restricted His omnipotence.  A man’s heart, therefore, is the only place evil can exist, because it is outside the presence of God, by His own choice.  It is the evil we choose in our hearts that forces our separation from God.  But God is sovereign, and when that evil leaves our heart and enters the world, we see that evil cannot be in God’s presence (Gen 50:20, Rom 8:28).  There are some good connections with my posts on “Free Will and Special Relativity” that I would like to explore at later time.

God has made the effort to orchestrate all of history to influence men in their hearts.  He knew man would fall, He designed it so that He would have to make the ultimate sacrifice of His Son, to demonstrate His love for us.  He even manages the minutia of your life, so that you can see Him for who He is, a loving Father, interested in only the best for His children, even when it hurts.

The battle is in your heart, and it is you that is fighting, not God (Eph 6:12).  He desires to see us fight, win, and return the love He has so generously poured on us. He desires you to invite His Spirit into your heart to free you from your own evil.

God is working for you, right now.  He has given you all the tools you need.  Are you fighting for Him? Are you returning His love? Are you becoming His child, by being made into the image of His Son (Rom 8:29)? Or have you continued to choose to have a heart full of evil, absent from God?

If you read the previous posts, you should no doubt believe God is able, and God loves you.  Those are simple but profound statements.  Putting them together brings a very difficult to accept conclusion.  It goes to the root of “what is evil,” but I want to leave most of that to the following post in this series.

God is not delinquent in bringing about His will.  He is not surprised.  He does not forget to act, He does not forget about you.  He is a purposeful God, with intentions that run the full length of history.  God is in control, He is able to take care of everything.  He loves us, beyond what we can comprehend.  He directs our lives in such a way as to get us to grow and to change into the men He wants us to be.  All the while we have a freewill, yet are unable to surprise Him by our choices.  He knows what lies before us.  He knows how hard it will be, and yet, He wants us to go through it.  I know there is a lot of nasty stuff going on in the world, I live close to a lot of it.  But that does not negate the reality of those two answers.  Doubting that takes us down the road of Job, and I do not want to have the “smack” brought down on me like that.

I started out the series by using the phrase “heart know.”  Living like we know that God is able, and that God loves us completely changes the way we approach life. God is not concerned with the same things you or I are.  We are motivated by self, He is love.  God is concerned about us, not our stuff, not our bodies, not our health.  He cares about the eternal you, not the now you. God wants us to grow up.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.  2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NKJV

God is not afraid to do what it takes to bring Himself glory through us.  More often than not that means tough stuff.  The stripping of the desires of the flesh is a difficult process, and one that is not done completely before death.

So why does a loving God do it?  Why would He allow such atrocities, even to His own children?

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.  For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NKJV

Atrocities are a human measure of what is happening. We are looking at temporary things.  This is but for a moment.  God is concerned about the “eternal weight of glory” and so should we.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.  Romans 8:18 NKJV

What are the worst thing believers go through?  Because even those cannot be compared to the glory God is working for eternity.

That is a story worth writing about, and He did.  He wrote it all for us, because of His love.

Edit: The next in the series is “The Battlefield.”

More and more time is passing, so there are now some people who are actually “from” Nairobi.  However, at least 90% of the people you ask, “Where are you from?”  They will answer somewhere outside Nairobi.  Nairobi is not their home, they just work here.  Outside Nairobi is almost completely agrarian, so there is a lot of attachment to land, and land inside the territory of one’s tribe.

Last Saturday we had a wonderful trip down to Wamunyu, the “up country” home of a coworker, neighbor, and great friend of mine, Charles Nzioki Mungaithi.  We actually drove through a good portion of Ukambani (inside the Kamba place).  We had a great time roasting some steak under a tree.  Charles purchased it, and Cammy marinated it, and I helped cook it.  Charles loves steak, and he is also alergic to mushrooms, we may be related   We watched his mother make sour milk and remove the butterfat from the milk she milked that morning.  We got a tour of the shamba (farm).  The boys got really dirty playing in the granaries.  We had a wonderful time.

We then drove up to Elizabeth’s parent’s place.  Elizabeth is Charles wife, Cammy’s good friend, and our neighbor.  They have a large egg business and we got a tour of the place there and had some chai and fried eggs.

On the way back to Nairobi we were listening music on our GPS, a Garmin Nuvi 855 (Thank you very much Pastor B!)  The song, “Kingdom of Comfort” by Delirious played.  Here are the lyrics:

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

I built myself a happy home
In my palace on my own
My castle falling in the sand
Pull me out, please grab my hand
I just forgot where I came from

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

I rob myself of innocence
With the poison of indifference
I buy my stuff at any cost
A couple of clicks and I pay the price
Coz what I gain is someone else’s loss

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
To this kingdom of heaven where you are king

It reminded me of a previous post.

One of the things I really appreciate about living here in Nairobi is that the constant conflict we find with culture is a reminder.  It is a reminder not only of why we are here, but of Whom we serve.  It helps me remember that my view of everything is limited, especially of God.  It brings me to a deeper understanding of who He is, and what He wants.

I was talking to a Kenyan from Nairobi today about ministering cross-culturally.  He recounted some work he did down in Masai land.  He said when you tell them, “Jesus loves you, He wants you to know Him.”  They would respond, “Well why did you not bring him with you?”

A couple of years ago I was trying to explain to a Sunday school class in Nairobi about how God disciplines us for our own good.  So I told them of how, as a child, I would play in my parents front yard.  Often the slope of their yard would cause our ball to roll out into the street.  As a young child the impulse is to run out to get the ball.  My parents taught me that was not good.  They disciplined me to teach me that.  How does a loving parent do things which seem painful?  It is out of their desire to protect us that they inflict pain, a most effective teacher.  When I asked the children why it would be bad to run out in the street after a ball, one girl raised her hand rather vigorously.  I called on her, and she said, “Because the street boys might get you.”  She was right, from her perspective.

Living, learning, loving, they are all affected by our perspective.  If we want to do more of those things, we have to be challenged, we have to learn to see things differently.  Often that can be painful, but it is better than being hit by a truck, or letting the street boys get you, and God knows that.