Back when my family and I lived in Cameroon's Grand North, working with National believers to plant a small church in the Muslim majority city of Maroua I used to do a lot of running. Over a few month period I logged over 500 miles. My runs took me through small out of the way African villages where I was told some of the people had never seen a white man up close let alone seen one running through their village. Sometimes I ran through Maroua where many stopped what they were doing to acknowledge my presence and encourage me by yelling, in Fulfulde or French, “Courage”, as I passed by. I found my excursions out of the city, along dry river beds on mostly deserted paths, more to my liking. Along these trails I often saw African farmers smiling, sweating, and laughing as they worked together on small plots of land, breaking up the hard, dry, and crusty ground with small hand tools. Close by were tiny mud brick houses with thatched roofs, no bigger than a 4x8 tool shed, where family members of all ages worked together to clean up from one meal only to begin preparing the next. Outside, small children laughed while they searched for elusive firewood for their mother's cook fires. No matter what the work, how hard, how mundane, or boring the people just seemed to enjoy each other’s company as though the task was just an excuse to do something together.
Besides enjoying each others company, these folks also seemed to enjoy my company as I ran through their neighborhoods. No matter how busy they were there was always time to smile, greet me, acknowledge my presence, offer me water, or just ask me who I was, where I lived, and why in the world was I running.
This used to bother me. I wasn't used to such interaction and I really never cared to become more than anonymous. But, I couldn't hold onto this kind of selfishness for long in Africa for the simple reason that life is hard, yes even on Americans who had come to help. I came to learn that tough times and dry ground, whether physical or spiritual, do more than toughen us up—they also tend to soften us up so that we are able to recognize what most of these people had known and enjoyed all along—life lived together is more fun and valuable than a life lived alone.
We really do need each other if for nothing else than to make the often tedious, boring, sometimes hard, and once in awhile, just plain painful journey through life a little bit more fun, more doable, and far more interesting than living life on your own. The African trails I ran never seemed to end. They went on and on seemingly forever into this southern fringe of the largest desert on earth. And when I did see people on them they were rarely if ever alone. For as they said, “If you want to travel fast go alone. If you want to travel far take others with you.”
Makes me wonder if I could have extended those 500 miles out some more if I had chosen to run with others rather than alone. Also gets me to thinking about how much further we could all be on our journey with Christ if we weren't so dead-set on walking alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment