Deep Treasure

“Approach each new day with desire to find Me. Before you get out of bed, I have already been working to prepare the path that will get you through this day. There are hidden treasures strategically placed along the way. Some of the treasures are trials, designed to shake you free from earth-shackles. Others are blessings that reveal My Presence: sunshine, flowers, birds, friendship, answered prayer. I have not abandoned this sin-wracked world; I am still richly present in it.

“Search for deep treasure as you go through this day. You will find Me along the way.” (Jesus Calling)

I have been finding it difficult to concentrate on God tonight. After spending all day cleaning, I keep thinking of how much there is left to do in my house. Parts of movies recently watched replay behind my eyelids. I mentally write my next blog, the one I intended to post five days ago. Things don’t slow down, and they certainly don’t stop.

I close my eyes, willing myself to focus on you, wishing the other images would fade into nothingness. They don’t. Maybe holding my hands out will help—open so you can take everything I have and I can receive you. Lists spin through my million-mile-an-hour brain. Frustration.

Listen for me, you say.

That sound be easy. Nature is quite loud tonight and I always hear you in nature.

I close my eyes and listen.

There is evidence of you all around.

Evidence, yes, you say, but that is not me tonight.

I try to identify individual sounds. The uneven rhythm of cicadas envelops me.

Are you in the cicadas?

No.

I try to tune out their hum and focus on another sound. Surprisingly, even from up on this hill I can hear croaks from the streambed below.

Are you in the frogs?

No.

The chorus of other insects blend and swirl together, and above them all (audibly and literally) an airplane passes overhead like a star broken free and on a mission. It is not beautiful. Man-made swooshes as metal fights past air is not beautiful.

Surely you are not in the airplane.

There is no reply, which I take for another no. What other sounds am I missing? Aunties talking by the home. Cars on the main road. Insects upon insects upon insects. Faint shouts from across the valley. I lean back and focus on my breathing.

My breathing.

Two long seconds in, stretched to their breaking point, a slow curve, and two measures out, relaxing and releasing, even, metered, and graceful. Over and over again. By the grace of God, over and over again.

That is where you are. Not in the cicadas or the frogs or the airplane, but in me. In every inhale and exhale. In every blink, every thought, every forgotten moment. I breathe you in and I breathe you out and still I think I have to look around to find you.

What a deep treasure it is to have your Spirit in me. 

Quotables

Lois (11): Auntie Katie, what did you eat for lunch?
Me: Chapattis and avocado.
Lois: You ate Abigail?!
Me: A-vo-ca-do.

Lois

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As I am walking up the hill with the nursery school children at the end of the day, one of them holds my water bottle for me.

Nathanial: I want some water! Share with us, Auntie Katie.

Me: No, the water is only for me.

Manuela: But I want water! You need to give us some.

Thomas: Yeah, Auntie Katie, you need to share!

Me: Trust me, I’m not saying this because I don’t love you. I want you to stay healthy. I can’t share with you.

Thomas (5): Agh… God is going to punish you for not sharing.

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As I am working on my computer on my verandah, Christy (8) sits down next to me and watches what I am doing. She then says, slightly confused, “Auntie Katie, I didn’t know your second name was MacBook.”

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A few minutes after I send Manessa away to go to the bathroom, he comes back into my house.

Thomas: Ah! Manessa didn’t wash his hands! They’re dry! Auntie Katie, he’s going to give us all Ebola!

Nathaniel & Thomas

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Thomas: Here comes Mr. Jesse!

Jesse: Here comes Mr. Jimmy!

Christy: Here comes Mr. Auntie Katie!

Me: Christy, am I a mister?

Christy: Yes.

Me: I don’t think so. Are you a mister?

Christy: No.

Me: What are you?

Christy: A cow.

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Tessa (5) and I finish a Winnie-the-Pooh themed puzzle with a picture of Rabbit on it.

Me: Great job, Tessa! Do you know who that is in the picture?

Tessa: Rabbit!

Me: And what kind of animal is rabbit?

Tessa: A kangaroo!

Tessa

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While the children are combing my hair:

“Auntie Katie, how do you get your hair to be like this?”

“I don’t know. It just grows that way.”

“Did you plant seeds?”

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Boda driver: Hello hello hello!

Me: Hello.

Boda driver: Morning morning morning!

Me: Good morning.

Boda driver: I love you!

Me: (keep running and look straight ahead)

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“Tim plus Amos equals seven. Is that right, Auntie Katie?”

“Um…”

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As I leave the children’s home, one of the toddlers runs outside.

“Auntie Katie!” he yells. I look back and he is standing with his arms stretched out to each side as far as they can go.

“What?”

“Auntie Katie, I want a biiiiiiiiiiig hug!”

He knew what he wanted. Good for him.

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While playing Old Maid with Angel and Martha, I shuffle the cards and do a bridge. Their eyes get huge.

Angel (9): Auntie Katie… you’re magic!

Angel

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Leah (10): (poking me in the side) Last time you came you were thin. Now you are very fat. Auntie Katie, you’re turning into a hippopotamus.

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One afternoon I was preparing a holiday craft in my house. As I cut and glued paper for a piñata, a few children gathered on my front steps and watched silently for a few minutes.

Manuela (6): (with a wistful sigh) I wish I was Auntie Katie so I could be doing that… but then I wouldn’t know how to wash my stockings.

(For the full story on this quote, read my recent post: I Know My Stockings Are Dirty)

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Lois: Did you get food in Kampala when you picked the babies?

Me: No, we only got babies.

Lois: Why?

Me: Because it would be too hard to hold the food in one hand and a baby in the other hand.

Lois: No! All you have to do is put the babies in a suitcase! … No wait… that’s not right…

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Isaac (5): I like your face… Everyday I like your face.

Isaac. I like his face too.

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Angel and Sarah come running up to me. Sarah shows me a cross-stitch kit.

Sarah: Auntie Katie, do you know how to do this?

Me: I think so. It’s been a long time but I used to do them.

Sarah: Can you help me?

Me: Sure, I can try.

Angel: (to Sarah) See, I told you Americans know how to do that.

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Lois: Auntie Katie, your skin is getting darker.

Me: Yeah, that’s what happens to mzungu skin when it’s in the sun a lot.

Lois: (thinks for a moment) When you came, you were a mzungu. Now you are half-caste. If you stay until Christmas, you’ll be as dark as me!  

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Over the holidays we did a relay race around the compound. As part of the preparation, I filled balloons with peanuts and hung them with pegs from my clothesline. When I finished, I turned around to find a confused girl behind me.

Dorothy (6): Auntie Katie, why did you wash your balloons?

Dorothy

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While introducing Pin the Tail on the Donkey to the nursery school children:

Teacher Harriet: What animal is this?

Children: A donkey!

Teacher Harriet: Yes, it is a donkey. What is it missing?

At least five children: Mary!

These children know their Bible stories. They are not so good at their animals… not one person noticed the donkey was tailless. 

Cosmic God

“Meet Me in the morning stillness, while the earth is fresh with the dew of My Presence. Worship Me in the beauty of holiness. Sing love songs to My holy Name. As you give yourself to Me, My Spirit swells within you till you are flooded with divine Presence.” (Jesus Calling)

Sometimes God feels close. He feels personal. He feels like us.

Songs and sermons tell me He is my Dad. He is my best friend. He is sitting in the chair next to me and He cares that I stubbed my toe and it hurts more than I would like to admit. He will wipe away every tear that falls, right?

My Dad. My friend. My tears. When did God become all about me?

Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones,

     ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;

     worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

     the God of glory thunders,

     the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is powerful;

     the voice of the LORD is majestic.

The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;

     the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,

     Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the LORD strikes

     with flashes of lightning.

The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;

     the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

The voice of the LORD twists the oaks

     and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;

     the LORD is enthroned as King forever.

The LORD gives strength to his people;

     the LORD blesses his people with peace.  (Psalm 29)

If we heard about some unknown creature in the forest who could speak lightning and twist the largest trees until the forest was bare, we would be terrified. Think of what he could do to us!

Then why do we not fear the LORD when we know He can do those things and more? He is a loving God, but He also made King Herod die and sent worms to eat his body. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He drowned the Egyptian army. He uses his power, yet we so often assume He will never use it on us. Jesus came as a sacrificial lamb, but He is also the lion of the tribe of Judah. We don’t see many paintings depicting Him as a lion. We see what we want to see—God coming down to be with us, to wrap us in His arms, to be close to us because He created us and loves us and we are his treasure.

How often do we think about God as God, and not as God-and-us?

I have recently started watching the TV series Cosmos that aired about a year ago, and all the talk about space blows my mind. We have no idea how small we are. Nothing gives me quite the same feeling as watching a fictional camera start somewhere on earth and zoom out to reveal the whole planet. It makes Uganda seem pretty small. Then the camera zooms out again to show not only our planet, but also all the ones around us—our solar system. Earth is one of many, and it’s not even that big. Then we take another step back and watch our solar system fade from view in the grand scheme of the Milky Way Galaxy. We can’t pick out our sun, let alone little ol’ earth.

Did you know earth is 30,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way? I cannot comprehend anything ever taking 30,000 years to get somewhere. Not when a fictional camera can zoom out in seconds. But we’re not finished.

From there, we take another step back and discover other galaxies surrounding ours. Suddenly the Milky Way looks negligible. What is so important about one galaxy among thousands in the Virgo Supercluster? And then we zoom out again to view more galaxies, more clusters of galaxies, and a whole network called the observable universe. Which, for all we know, could be contained inside a bubble that bumps around with an infinite number of other bubbles, each with their own universes and galaxies and planets with people who think they are the center of it all. Would it make any difference at all if one of those bubbles suddenly popped?

We, human beings on earth, are profoundly insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. We tend to think of ourselves as something special, but from my understanding our entire planet could disappear and it would affect virtually nothing. It would be like if I pulled out one of your leg hairs and expected you to never be able to walk again. It is only in the past few hundred years that we have been able to break free from our egocentricity and open our minds to much greater realities.

Just like how in recent centuries people have learned to view the universe outside of earth’s place in it, so we need to learn to view God outside of His relationship with us. If our only knowledge of God was meant to come through personal encounters with Him, we would never need the Bible because we would never need to know more. But God is bigger than my quiet time with Him. He is bigger than a thunderstorm with Him and He is bigger than the words He speaks to me. If I limit God’s character to His interactions with me, I am no better than the people who thought the earth was the center of the universe.

Psalm 29 struck me because there is no first person perspective. It is written objectively, not saying, “This is who I think God is” or “This is who God is to me” (a classic one in today’s culture), but “This is who God is.” Period. Because God is greater than our thoughts and He is greater than His interactions with any one of us.

Where have I even stood but the shore upon your ocean?

That is one of my favorite song lyrics. It reminds us that we see only a finite part of who God is. No matter how hard we strain our eyes, we see only a portion. We are not yet capable of more, but that doesn’t mean God cannot be more.

So think about God objectively. Think about God outside His relationship with you. Think about God like David did. Remember that God is the center; He is not just your helper. Take a moment to stop imagining Him in the chair next to you and start imagining Him on His throne. Stop talking in first person.

Don’t make it about yourself. Make it about God.

(Photo from: http://www.karlremarks.com/2013/04/study-confirms-that-lebanon-is-indeed.html)