John 1 – Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote– Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”…
Nathanael’s response to Philip when Philip shared the exciting news, are the words of a skeptic; a doubter; a cynic. “Nazareth? That God forsaken dump – that horrible place?! There’s nothing there! The promised Messiah is going to come from Nazareth? Why on earth would God do that? It can’t be.”
Before I get on my high horse and go after Nathanael, I asked myself how often I voiced very similar questions when confronted with God’s will and working in your life or something that I have been working for with others. “Can anything good come out of this—this place, this occurrence, this person, this project, even this set of circumstances? Why is this happening to me? Why would God use or work through that guy? Why on earth would God cause or permit this to happen?” Worse yet, you know as well as I do that there are times that God is working great and wonderful things in our lives; real and tangible things we can see and hear and behold—i.e., the Word rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered—but because these things don’t match with our great expectations, our visions, and our assumptions of how things are supposed to be, we’re quick to dismiss, to rebel, to argue, and to fight. We’ll take a bold stand and raise hell and cause schism, all because “this couldn’t possibly be of or from God.” Why? Because it’s not what we expected?
We have been going through some of that with Project 24. Things haven’t been working in ways that we expected and in some instance things haven’t been working. We are sorting it out the best we as human beings can. Working with partners. Changing some partners and looking for others. We have had a time of “restructuring”, and I hate to use that word but we are moving forward. There has been a lot of prayer too and sometimes our prayers weren’t answered the way we thought.
I have not shared a lot of information on what has happened because it deals with partners that we care about very much and we want to put the best construction on everything and so in the weeks ahead we hope to lay out a new direction and a new day for work with at risk kids and orphans in Kenya. We are hoping to be able at some time to send Mary Okeyo travelers again but that is a ways off. Thanks for your continued support, and please continue to pray.
