full moon

so i'm here-in kenya- under a spectacular full moon.  it's full in  a huge way- full and promising and close and encouraging.  it's lighting up the clouds in the sky like they are the platform holding her up.  her perfect roundness and glow.  so night isn't so so dark and scary.  it's like the night has a secret- that it's opening up.

it's funny that to be here feels foreign to me- even though i live so close, even though it's east africa, even though there is red dirt and dry air and beautiful flowering trees and more white butterflies than i've ever seen- -it's not uganda- it's different. 

this conference is for medical missionaries from all over the world (but i think mostly africa) to come and learn how to better care for the people they work with- how to improve techniques, how to practice evidence based medicine, to learn the updates from the west, to learn how to adapt them to resource poor places.  it's also a place to connect with other people who have decided to pluck up their normal lives and live somewhere else and not get paid and serve the poor, because that is what we should do.  well, taking care of sick people in the developing world is only one  way to this- it just happens to be the way i feel i'm supposed to do this. but we should all care for each other, gently.  we should love each other kindly, we should treat each other with justice and mercy and grace.  

so i'm here for a while.  away from home and alone but in community.  i'm in a place of wondering and waiting. of contemplation and curiosity- because this life is full of surprises- and listening to the still small voice of God is powerful and so full of goodness.  our first six months have been full of settling in - adjusting kids, building community, exploring possibilities (and there are many) and beginning work in some areas.  sometimes as we look around we get confused.  we wonder what we're doing, or why, or how we'll do it.  we get overwhelmed.  we feel small facing big problems.  we feel young facing old troubles.  we feel simple surrounded by complex- or we feel complex surrounded by simple.  and we can spin and spin and fret and worry and wonder and waste our energy.

but.  then there is that still small voice calling us to be still. reminding us that we are small- but God isn't.  reminding us that the suffering around us isn't with in our capacity to fix or even to bear, but it's with in His capacity. that what we do- we do with God's grace.  we are asked to be willing, we are asked to try, we are asked to lean, we are asked to trust Him and allow that to be enough.

what is more important than getting an old lady to an eye specialist, is to care for her gently.  what's more important than our agenda of getting a building built with in a certain amount of time, is to treat people fairly, and with forgiveness if it's needed, and always with love.  always with grace.  always with kindness.

and those things we can all do- all of us, under this great sheltering night sky- all of us- as we share this same moon.