Fact Finding

I have a couple friends who just took off for Ethiopia this past Saturday. I am so excited for them. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever been more juiced about people going oversees or on a mission before, except for my own folks who are LIVING on another continent. But that’s for another posting. This is about A&A. The couple who left their four children back in Spokane to follow God’s nudging to seek him out and gather information for home. It’s a fact finding trip…on the surface.

Fact finding is always as deep as a person is willing to search. Wikipedia has become the new and easiest source of information and as someone I know says, “If it’s on the internet, it must be true.” One can Google anything and have so many options (so long as the search word is spelled correctly) that a few clicks can take you to depths you had no idea existed. And yet even with the millions of pages and links that Google provides, it can’t compare to information gleaned from a conversation with a new friend who lives in the street on the other side of the world. Google that!

A&A emailed an update of their trip and described the stimulation and ever dousing newness of a new culture and place so well.
“Filtering everything through an American mindset does not work, our culture, sense of human rights, etc. can't process it all, and like a computer operating system loaded with programs it's not designed to handle, your mind and heart can crash. I believe that filtering everything through the timeless Word of God and praying for discernment is the best way to process the sights, sounds, smells that are Ethiopia.”

That’s a great description with the computer and worth a whole other blog, yet for now, something else profound popped out at me in that statement. “Filtering through the timeless (and may I add boundary-less) Word of God…best way to process.” As I mentioned, we often use a search engine or even an encyclopedia or book to filter our questions and theories. Those are good and useful but how often do we start with or even consider the Bible as a search engine? I am utterly guilty of overlooking it, especially with the important matters. So it’s great to be reminded by those who are experiencing new things and senses every moment. Our lives can become mundane, routine and unsurprising which in turn slows or ceases any search we might be on. Stimulation runs dry. We aren’t moved to know something new or simply forgotten.

Fact finding in Ethiopia will focus the trip for A&A, though if they could tangibly load those facts, I’m not sure they could carry all the bags. But I’m so grateful for their fact finding because not only will it impact me, their children, and the church when they share the stories, but it’s challenging me right now to seek and find. Find the facts that God has set for me here and now, to know, embrace and use.

From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Acts 17: 26-28