the finder of lost things

"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" (Luke 15:8-10).

When I turned 14, my parents gave me an unexpected birthday gift.  A little gold ring with an oval-cut ruby in the center with two little diamond chips on either side.  With the exception of a string of pearls I remember wearing in my third grade school photo with a cable-knit sweater and plaid skort (my father's influence) , it's the only piece of jewelry I remember my parents giving me.  They explained that the ruby signified my relationship with Christ and His sacrifice for me, and the two diamonds were to represent me and my future husband.  The ring was meant to be worn on my left hand, a placeholder on my finger until someone some day replaces it with another.  

It's a little corny, maybe, but it's become a significant symbol in my life.  Once a simple purity ring, not unlike the ones that many of my high school peers wore after a True Love Waits seminar in youth group meetings - it's taken on a much greater meaning.  This isn't just about purity, or romance, or my future husband.  It's a constant reminder that I'm married first to Christ.  He's my Beloved.  And so His desires should be my desires, and I dare not be an unfaithful, wandering bride.  I think that even one day when its place might be taken by another ring - and another covenanted symbol - I'll keep it close by.  Hard to think of letting it go - even after it's served its intended purpose.

My freshman year of high school, I took a ceramics class.  One afternoon, in a moment of carelessness, I'd taken off my ring to make sure it didn't get clay all over it and set it somewhere I assumed it would be safe.  A day or two later, I realized I couldn't remember where that safe place was.  For a few months, I couldn't find my ring anywhere.  It became an issue of intense anxiety - some irrational fear about having lost my virtue or some other such nonsense.  But I couldn't find it anywhere.  Finally, it appeared.  Nestled atop a pile of fresh laundry, no one in my family could account for where it had been or how it had returned to me.  I chalked it up to an angel working some sneaky divine miracle.

Last weekend, somewhere between showering and preparing dinner and perhaps a few other possibilities for why I might have taken off my ring, I lost it once again.  I searched everywhere, trying to remember where I had last seen it and what I'd been doing.  I kept checking the usual places - my bedside table, the bathroom sink, a spot on my bookshelf - as well as other unusual locations, but it was nowhere to be found.  

This Friday is my birthday.  I turn 24 this year.  So it will be the tenth anniversary of the year my parents gave me that ring.  Ten years of a covenanted, though imperfect, season of commitment to honoring the Lord in my relationships, with my heart, and in how I live my life.  A decade of feeling naked when it's not on my finger - a constant reminder of the promise I'd been offered and that I'd made at 14.  Somehow the loss of that ring during this particular week seemed even greater.

Friday morning, a week before my big day, it came back to me.  Underneath a stack of shirts just laundered by our house helper and left in my bedroom, it appeared again.  But in my delight in finding it once again, there was still a sweet reminder that no object, no matter how symbolic and significant, bears that promise itself.  That ring itself is made of precious metals and stones that will one day, like everything else in this world, fade away.  The object is merely a reminder.  It's only God and people and the relationships between the two that ultimately matter.  We're the only "lost things" that God cares about.  And He'll keep seeking us out until we make the decision to find Him in return.  

May the lost things in your life be recovered today - but more importantly, may the Lost of the world find the one who desperately desires us to be Found.

exchanging rubbish for greatness

Two weeks ago, I walked off of BA flight 294 into Jomo Kenyatta airport.  It was my second homecoming, and the beginning of a third year of ministry in Nairobi.  My roommate, Jen, and I said farewell to our seat-mate, a chatty young British woman off on a solo safari with the severance pay from losing her accounting job with Cadbury when Kraft bought them out, breezed through immigration, and waited at the carousel for my bags which must have been buried at the very bottom of the plane.  A West Nairobi School driver, Paul, and his brother awaited us in the giant lobby area, and we made our way to our new home on Muringa Rd.  


Over the next week, we settled into our house, enjoyed getting to know our new roommate, Dawn, ran all over our city, and spent plenty of time at school preparing our classrooms, going through orientation meetings, and greeting new faculty members.  The days filled quickly, and before I knew it, I was hugging my brother, Sam, and our friend, Mike, in the Junction parking lot.  The two had finished up a short-term missions trip north of Nairobi in Nanyuki, evangelizing in the community and working with the local church.  I still can't believe how much my little brother, an incoming high school junior, has grown and matured this summer.  And when I think about it, I left for the first time to come to Nairobi when he was moving into high school as a freshman.  Huge things are happening in Sam's life. The boy's definitely becoming a man.  A huge part of me wishes that I wasn't missing that.  


Six days of visitors followed.  It was energizing to have two people from my "other world" experience the one I live in here.  I'd spent some of the summer invested in ministry with these two, working with Hilliard Davidson high school students and enjoying watching a budding ministry thrive over what often become the most spiritually empty months of a student's life.  Really helped to ignite and fuel a passion for my own students' spiritual growth at WNS.  I remember speaking at length over the summer with folks back home about a new discipleship program we planned to build up this year and how crucial I felt that program would be in the trajectory of our spiritual growth as a school.  Much has changed at West Nairobi School over the past few years.  What used to be a true "missionary school" has been infiltrated by the World.  A majority of students at our Christian school are non-Christians now.  Totally changes the dynamic, and, in turn, has to change our battle plan as Christly educators.  


Sam and Mike were able to take part in our first vision-casting meeting with our school chaplain, Mike, FCA advisor, Jonathan, four high school students and myself before the school year started up.  So a Hilliard teacher and high school student were able to share with WNS student and staff leaders the story of how a student ministry at a public high school in the States was built up, prayed over, and eventually burst forth into a truly dynamic presence in a spiritually hungry and dry place.  What an inspiration to our group, and a timely and even unsettling reminder that at our Christian institution here in Nairobi - one where we are given boundless freedom to talk openly and often about Biblical Truth, the Gospel, and Christ himself - we can and should be doing so much more to encourage our students to encounter, know, and develop a passion for the Lord.  That meeting, and a follow-up time over an Ethiopian lunch at Habesha with the same group, seemed to light things up in my co-workers and in some of our most influential students.  There's a real hunger now.  A desire to see multiplication, yes, but more sincerely, a desire to lead a currently idle, complacent, and sluggish group of students into an enthusiastic, eager, and zealous team of united Christ-followers.  


I've come to think that this might be the reason why God might have asked me to come back to this place for another year.  The past two years have been certainly been anointed and affirmed, as I've watched God accomplish good things through this pretty unworthy vessel.  He's used this place and these people to mold my heart and craft my vision for the life work He's calling me to.  I've been able to contribute to the school itself as an educator in the day to day and in building up programs and improving things in existence.  Relationships have been established and I believe I've used the growing passion God's given me for building up a future generation as critical thinkers who embrace a Biblical worldview.  


But this year?  This year, I feel things might come to a climax.  Because no matter how much I may think that God has me here as a teacher because I have something to offer, it's in spite of the fact that I am nothing that He has me here.  And because no matter how much I may think that my work is to educate, I must remember that "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears" (1 Corinthians 13:8-10).  The knowledge of this world is passing away.  What ultimately matters is in whose hands my students' hearts lie.  So often I forget that simple, penetrating truth.  "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish


My awareness of this truth hasn't necessarily meant that my outlook's been completely reclaimed and transformed.  But I do believe that it's affected sincere change in my approach to the start of this academic year.  I'm thankful for a roommate who shares this vision, and already, we've delighted in a shared change of heart and some small, but significant victories.  I've realized that I wasn't alone in the distress with which I completed last school year.  There were other discouraged and defeated hearts out there.  But each of us seem to have experienced God grabbing us by the scruffs of our necks and pulling us back into a place where we can experience joy and contentment and where we might actually be of use to Him again.  After several hours this past Monday of orientation meetings and work in our classrooms to prepare for Tuesday, our first official day of school, Jen and I set aside the Monday afternoon to set out on an old family tradition of mine: a prayer walk.  What I suspected would take a half hour or so turned into over two hours of focused, deliberate, and joyful time with the Lord.  Starting with pre-kindergarten on the elementary side of campus, we walked by each classroom, specifically praying over the teacher for that class, the students themselves, and the spiritual journey of the year in their lives.  A few teachers were in their rooms and we were able to ask for specifics on how to lift them up, but in general, we just spent time saturating the place in prayer.  Couldn't have asked for a better way to shift my focus from my own selfish concerns and anxieties over to what God wants for this school, these students, and His plan.  


In turn, this week was probably the easiest and most contented transition I've ever made from the comfort, ease and calm of a summer to the start of a school year.  I woke up Tuesday morning feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to go.  I entered campus with enthusiasm and anticipation.  I made my copies and made my way to my classroom knowing that it didn't matter that none of my bulletin boards were finished, that few of my materials were set up for the semester, or that my lesson plans for the week weren't exactly solid.  What mattered was what God wanted to do that day in my classroom, and I was ready for Him to reveal that to and through me.  I greeted my former students, shaking hands and offering hugs, receiving brief updates on the summer and plenty of smiles and comments of excitement for the new year.  When bells rang, I felt prepared to encourage my classes to greet the year with optimism and purposeful vision.  When the day was over, I felt ready for the next one.  


God's so good.  I'm so thankful for what He's shared with me in the past two weeks.  I didn't think I was ready to let go of summer and come back to a place that I'd remembered as being quite often more challenging and frustrating than satisfying.  But I've been able to reconnect with people I love and meet new colleagues and build new relationships.  I spent a week with my brother and a friend, reminding me that God's not limited by geography, that I'm overwhelmingly prayed over, that WNS is a blessed place where Christ has laid His hands, and that as members of the body, we're all sharing in the same work and serving the same Lord.  And it's good work.  Good and worthy of my full heart and mind and energy and passion.  


Special Prayer Request:


We were recently informed as a staff of a tragedy that has affected another school in the NICS network.  On August 5, ten civilians, including six Americans, were ambushed and killed near Kabul, Afghanistan during their time serving as part of a medical missions team.  One of those killed was the son of two NICS missionaries and had recently joined the staff of the OASIS school in Kabul.  Please keep the families of those killed in your thoughts and prayers.  It's a sober reminder that life is short and that tomorrow isn't promised.  I'm also reminded to be thankful for the peaceful outcome of the recent constitutional reformation in Kenya and that I'm in a nation that offers the freedom to worship without fear.  The world's in shambles and needs the Lord.  Let's not forget that.


The final harrowing moments of humanitarian workers ambushed and murdered by Taliban

6 Americans among 10 killed in Afghanistan