Wednesday, October 17, 2007

i wanted to share this passage from this book that i am reading--i thought was pretty delicious...the book is called
Christianity Rediscovered--its about this missionary who rediscovers the gospel message while working among the Masai in Tanzania...

"Months later when all this had passed, I was sitting talking with a Masai elder about the agony of belief and unbelief. He used two languages to respond to me--his own and Swahili. He pointed out that the word my Masai catechist, Paul, and I had used to convey FAITH was not a very satisfactory word in their language. It meant literally "to agree to." I, myself, knew the word had that shortcoming. He said "to believe" like that was simliar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his fingers took part in the act. We should find another word. He said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed
to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelopes it in his arms (Africans refer to the front legs of an animal as its arms), pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills. This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is. I looked at the elder in silence and amazement. Faith understood like that would explain why, when my own was gone, I ached in every fiber of my being. But my wise old teacher was not finished yet. 'We did not search you out, Padri,' he said to me. 'We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from
your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.'"



remember who the Lion is today...be enveloped in His arms...

Thursday, October 11, 2007