Although only a passerby it was evident that life in this place of dust was wrestling for survival. Survival from sickness. Survival from suffering. Survival from danger. Survival from trappings of common conveniences. Perhaps even survival from the anxieties and burdens we layer upon ourselves like fine dust. Yet through this reddish-brown residue covering every aspect of life, was transparency.
Passing by town after town, all with similar struggles and lengthy Maasai names, it occurred to me that the challenges and sacrifices one makes entering into this land as an outsider were not as great as I once thought. Living in the shadow of Kilimanjaro no doubt brings many challenging transitions from one opportunity of living to another, however, the joy that springs forth is fulfilling and freeing. Extended vision upon dust misses the grandeur of the mountain behind.
David Livingston said:
“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.” ***
*** (Cited in Samuel Zwemer, “The Glory of the Impossible” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Ralph Winter and Stephen Hawthorne, eds. 1981.
nehrely there 