After a time of waiting I am finally, finally on the road to Africa. It has been in my heart for years, and really all I have wanted to do since freshman year of college. Maybe even before. I don't really remember. When people here and there have asked my why...why I want to go, why Africa etc., sometimes I have not articulated my answer well. Yes, because I love God. Yes, because God commands us to love our neighbor. Yes, because my heart has been broken for the least of these. It is a little more than that too. I was reading ''Cry the Beloved Country'' this year (great book) and in an essay written by Jarvis, a white man who turned social activist against apartheid, wrote:
''I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a start that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie...I am lost when I balance this against that, I am lost when I ask if this is safe, I am lost when I ask if men will approve. Therefore I shall try to do what is right, and to speak what is true. I do not do this because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul...Yet it would not be honest to pretend that it is solely an inverted selfishness that moves me. I am moved by something that is not my own, that moves me to do what is right, at whatever cost it may be.''
I am not under any sort of false idea that I am going out to change the world. But I can change some things. I can do good to some. I can show the love of Christ to some of those who may need it most. I have seen some of the pain in the world. I have seen orphans who are hurting, scared, alone. I cannot in good conscience live an unaffected life after that. I must help where I can, bring hope where I can, show little ones that they are not forgotten. Not by the world, not by God.
This is where the journey begins. Not sure where it will take me. Scared? Yes.
But I'm in good hands.
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