A life less comfortable

"Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?" - Ann Voskamp As I read those words, I think of suffering and sorrow. These are bittersweet gifts given to lead one by the hand to a loving Father. The One who was and is and is to come. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. Who can discern this life we life? Who can write asks Voskamp, "the sharp Holy Writ on the page that makes a careful incision into a life, blade words that kindly cut the tissue back to where the soul and spirit join, tenderly laying bare the intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12) I have recently read through Hebrews and have found God in the printed words. Amazing but true. THE God of the universe. That He would join me and speak to me is a profound mystery! I struggle through this world. I question and ache, and wonder about what it is all about and does it really matter at all...

Have you ever been nearly run down by a wheel barrel filled with pickled cow's heads? It happened to me last week as I was shoe shopping at Mont Buet with Leanne, Hannah and Kristy. We had weaved our way through a sea of humanity, sometimes walking single-file, haltingly, with walls of sound colliding and competing for our attention. The streets winding and crowded with vendors and shoppers all around. Vendors selling coconuts or cloth or diapers by the bundle. Some have tables with their wares perched precariously and some have wheel barrels, some have actual shops lining the streets, and then there are some with a cloth spread on the pavement with merchandize piled high and haphazard. One can buy almost anything at this African market. The fruits and vegetables covered with flies, shining with vibrant color, artfully piled into small mounds. People are bumping into one another and stopping suddenly as something catches their eyes. We often hear vendors shouting out after u...

There is a book I read many years ago entitled, "The Crime of Living CAUTIOUSLY" by Luci Shaw, which gabbed my attention and filled me with a longing to live courageously not cautiously. Since reading that little book much has changed in my life. I still battle between cautious living verses courageous living but little by little I swing towards the courageous life. I live in Gabon, some have called it "Earth's Last Eden". For those of us who live here life isn't so "Eden-like", in fact one has to travel far and wide with much expense to find this "Last Eden". So four of us friends set out to find this Eden we have heard so much about and discover it for ourselves, in living color not glossy magazine images or billboards posted around the capital. We bought knock-off Converse "Chuck Taylor" shoes in the three colors of Gabon's flag... Leanne - blue, Lisa - yellow, me - green, and Hannah - white (white isn't actually...