Stillness

I have been busy this week. Too busy.

When I was in Long Beach, I instituted something in my life that was imperative to my life. I was hanging out at Thursday night Life Group with the Modern Loving Family and we were talking about prayer. We talked about the need to spend time in prayer and devotion everyday and of people that make a point to spend a hour a day. At the time I was faithful to my nightly devotional and it was maybe 20-30 minutes a night. Although after that Life Group, I decided that it would benefit me and glorify God to set aside one hour everyday to spend quality time with the Lord. I was indeed busy with church stuff, but my schedule allowed me to wake up and spend time out on the terrace with just my chair and my Bible. It had become a rhythm of life.

I had so much time on my hands while I was in Wisconsin and while I did spend time with the Lord daily, I got lazy and didn’t discipline myself to spend that specific hour. Because of my laziness there, my specific hour a day no longer was a rhythm in my life. This last week has been go go go and so much has happened, so much except that hour a day. Now, I find myself with no clarity of thought and I’m quite confused and unable to focus. Even last night, I was going to blog and started off going down one train of thought and then stopped and said no I’ll go with this angle and then got frustrated with that and stopped writing altogether. When I would have my hour a day (which is sometimes longer and sometimes divided between two times) the time is spent 20-25 minutes in silence and free prayer, 20-25 minutes in the Word and 20-25 minutes in directed prayer. Because I’ve cut back on all these areas, especially the first, I find myself a bit of a mess. Because I haven’t spent time in silence and allowing my brain time to think and pray my thoughts, I’m confused. Because I’m not reading as much in the Bible, I’m not meditating on His Word and growing in knowledge. And because I’m not having my directed prayer, I feel guilty because I know that I’m not praying for others as much as I should be. This is no way to start missionary work.

Last night I had a dream. A very confusing dream. It is the only thing that I can think of that is too personal for me to discuss in a blog, but we’ll say that it has been something very important to me for over four years now. I woke up so frustrated and so confused. This is something that I prayed for countless times and the Lord apparently said “no.” I have tried to forget it and get on with life, and thought that it was a done deal, then out of the blue it pops up again and since I haven’t been spending as much time with Him, I wasn’t prepared and it was hard and uncomfortable. I should have and need to be in this blessed communion. If I’m not spending quality time with Him, I’m at best a confused, disoriented mess of a man and at worse living in sin.

Here I am in flippin’ Africa, living out a promise that He spoke two and a half years ago and I’m not even spending time with Him here like I should.

So what is it that has me so preoccupied? Everything. For one, jet lag. Also, spending about seven hours a day learning a new language, practicing guitar, sleeping, moving into my new house, going to the airport and picking up my luggage, going to church, catching up with friends in Moshi, speaking and eating with new friends at language school, emailing and trying to resolve this identity theft thing and all the normal daily activities that everyone does. Make no mistake about it, I am quite busy and all of it is necessary for me to be doing right now. Yet I look at that and can’t say “okay, that activity is definitely more important than spending time in devotion.” There is nothing more important to do daily. And this is what I can’t get about my life, or anyone else’s, we have to pencil in solitude time with the Lord. Its always frustrated me hearing people saying “I don’t have time for devotion” or “I only have 15 minutes free a day.” And while I didn’t say it myself, for the last month, I’ve been doing worse than that, I’ve been living it. Take this as my confession to the brethren.

Last time I checked, if we are Christians and our main purpose is glorifying the Lord and advancing His Kingdom here on earth, then how is it logical that we only spend, at best, 15 minutes (out of a possible 1440) with the Chief, the King, our Father, our Savior everyday? I hear people say and justify myself at times with the same notion, “I talk to God throughout the day, driving, eating, hanging out with friends, working, whatever, so I don’t need a daily devotional.” If you are doing that, that’s good. 1 Thessalonians 5:16 says to “pray without ceasing” and we should do that. But Psalm 46:10 says to “be still and know that I am God.” How can we be moving towards full knowledge of God and hearing His thoughts on our life if we’re not also spending time being still before Him? The two are not at all mutually exclusive, but rather are the markers of a healthy prayer life.

How we spend our time is how we spend our lives. How we spend our lives is what will be the second judgment for Christians after we enter eternity. How we live our lives shows what we count as important. Anna showed God she thought talking to Him was important and served Him by spending 84 years in fasting and prayer in the temple (Luke 2). That’s righteous. I don’t know what the Lord is calling you to, I am not even sure what He’s calling me to, to spend in daily devotion, but I imagine that if it’s the same God that Anna served, its probably more than 15 minutes a day.

Don’t get me wrong, if you give Him 15 minutes He’ll use it. But I want more of Him, that’s important to me, and I know that so much of that will come from waiting on Him and spending quality time with Him.

So today, I spent quality time with the Lord and I feel at peace. He didn’t boom with a loud voice, but He spoke and I was still. I was able to slow down and meditate on what it means to be serving Him in Tanzania as I watched wild monkeys jump around in the trees overhead. I was able to speak honestly about the dream and my confused thoughts became a sacrifice lifted up. I was able to smile and thank God that He has me working here with these blessed children. It was what it should be. It was beautiful.

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Welcome to a new segment of my blogs that I call “The Rundown,” as in “Hey Jim, could you get me a rundown?” (The Office reference, anyone?). During this segment, I will give the 411 on what I’ve been up to physically. I feel that the most important part of my life is what the Lord is teaching and doing in me spiritually and how that relates physically and that’s what the bulky first section will be. But along with that are physical things that won’t get put above the dashed line, so I’ll put them down here. So let’s just pretend that I didn’t do the dashed line yet and when I do it again, you just know what I’m doing.

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The Rundown: Language school has been going well. It is so much information but a lot of it is sticking. I really enjoy learning new languages and none more than Swahili. Anybody want me to translate something for them? I enjoy the people that are in my class and we have fun. There is one other American (from Ohio) and his name is Brendan. Because mwalimu Gouden (teacher Gouden) can’t really pronounce the difference well, we are Brandan kwanza na Brandan pili (First Brandan and second Brandan). There is an Italian man named Stefano, a Scottish man named David and a German woman named Daniela. Walimu jina lao Mama Gouden na Mama Frida. In free time I’ve been studying, playing a lot of guitar and taking advantage of the above average Tanzanian food they have here. This weekend, I went to Moshi. (Man, as I write this I feel like I’m supposed to be writing in Swahili). I took the coaster which is always an adventure. Lydia picked me up and we went to TOA so that I could see the kids and they were all excited to see me. Awadhi had just got out of the shower and was wrapped in a towel soaking wet when I first saw him, when he saw me he was surprised and smiled. I went up to him and gave him a big hug and got a wet mouth giving him kisses. I love him. After that I went to my new home and met the missionary family, whose back house I am living in. They are from Maryland and their names are Noe and Amanda. They have three Ethiopian adopted children named Moses, Noah and Laylo. They are really cool and we get along well. Saturday morning, I went over and visited with Ryan, Stacy and the kids then I spent time at the orphanage and got my bed set up at the house (its really comfortable). The last two of my three bags came in, so Lydia, Jodie and I went to get them at the airport. I went into get them and was happy to see that they were never opened along the way. The guy at the desk was nice, but told me that I had to go get them looked in at Customs. When he called the agent, who should come out, but the same guy that tried to have me “tip” him for taking my guitar over this summer. The most expensive thing I had in the box was my big djembe Jonah, but I purposely put him towards the bottom of the bigger tub. The customs agent must have been being lazy, because he didn’t go that deep and didn’t find anything worth bribing me for. So praise God. Having all my bags helped me as I unpacked more Saturday night. Sunday, I went to church with Stacy and the kids to ICC and saw some of the Fountain of Hope kids that I know. After service I went out to eat with some of the local missionaries, all of which were female. I feel like I’m a Liberal Studies major all over again. Then I went home, packed for the week and then drove my piki piki to TOA to drop it off and see the kids before heading back to Usa River. And oh yeah, my identity was stolen this week. That was fun. I’ve been praying that no one in my email contacts sent any money to England and I laughed at seeing what an awful job the guy did impersonating me. At any rate, I am happy to have gmail now and I am in talks with Facebook and it looks like I should get my profile back soon. All is well. Hamna shida. Life is good. God is good.