Makes Me Smile

Sitting by a fire on a July evening is a gift of 7,500 feet on the equator.  The team is all gone, now safely arrived in the US.  Tomorrow morning begins my 30-hour+ journey of cars, trains and airplanes. Before I leave I’ll fulfill the old Africa tradition of kissing the four walls in anticipation of returning.

But tonight is one for reflection and celebration.

Our team was a rich gift both to the Africans and me. I know that Jesus saw each of them as a gift as well.  So much witnessed and experienced. Makes me smile.

My last day though is also one of melancholy. A long litany of final meetings, African thank you’s and reminisces. As the day draws to close and the fire roars, I have my porch kids still here, unanxious to go to the places they live.  I’m reminded that when I leave, the safe place they’ve found here will disappear and the reality of another life will sink in fully – for them and for me.  Christ has mysteriously blessed me with their same heart and I fear for them and for me. But then Christ has also blessed me with the same hope and I rejoice.

The final victory is won and whether we live in the undeserved freedom and plenty of the US or the challenging world of much of Africa, He smiles on us all and promises us an eternity of joy.

So I prepare to leave, and I pause to thank Him. To thank Him for my life and its intersection with those I witness here in a land where the Garden and Gehenna reside so near. And as I offer praise by the summer flames, He speaks to me and says, “It is finished.”

And in this completed work I think of what it will be for all of us to play and rejoice together on His porch eternally.

Makes me smile.

PS: I’ll be back.

by Jim Wood, Senior Pastor for First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.