Receiving a piece of bread

The foundational "lifestyle celebration" in the Word Made Flesh community is intimacy. Intimacy with God. We recognize this as our highest and deepest calling, the reason we were created, to know Christ and thus worship Him. I realize that may sound a little sentimental to some, but over and again during my time in Africa this draw towards intimacy with Jesus has been a continuous, underlying theme of each day.

One Sunday in Nairobi, the lyrics of a worship song from church stuck in my head and resonated within me: "My Comfort, my Shelter, Tower of refuge and strength, Let every breath, all that I have, never cease to worship You...My Saviour, my closest Friend, I will worship You until the very end.

As I left church, I asked myself if that is really true in my life. Do I truly consider Jesus my One and only Saviour, and my closest, most treasured Friend? I want to. I want Him to be my All.

And here in Freetown, at our Monday meetings we have been looking at Scripture and sharing about whole-hearted devotion, having an undivided heart. It has been so good for my soul to reflect on how deep God's love is, and challenging to consider that He alone is worthy of my praise.

A few weeks ago at First Presbyterian Church we took communion. At this church, the whole congregation walks forward, is handed a wafer and cup of grape juice and then remains standing by the stage, waiting for everyone to join the group and partake in communion together.

As I came forward, Pastor Zizer (my host dad) took a wafer in his hand, made the sign of the cross with it, and held it out for me. I reached forward to take it, but he pulled it back. Confused, I tried to take it from his hand again, but he subtly shook his head, motioned for me to stand still and hold out my hand so that he could hand me the waver, placing it in my open palm.

I started to cry a little as I thought about the picture I was just given of God's love. He gives it freely. It is not something I need to snatch or reach out and grab for myself. God comes down and lavishes His grace upon us (1 John 3:1) though we have hang-ups and make mistakes and can never really get our act together. And that's the point - that we cannot clean ourselves up before coming to God. He is the one that washes us clean, and pours His love and saving grace upon us.

Salone update: Am loving Freetown. Today we return to our "regular" schedule. I have tutoring and my weekly visit to Kroo Bay with Erin to do medical check-ups. We are visiting one woman who had a serious stroke but is walking with a cane now that Erin has been working with her, and a little boy named Ibrahim who has cerebral palsy. And then, I shall return home to do some serious laundry! :) More on last week's "Children in Crisis" conference later...