how it really is

One hundred shilings if you can name this movie moment:

JEN: It must be exciting to be a fighter,
to be totally free!

YU: Fighters have rules too: friendship,
trust, integrity... Without rules,
we wouldn't survive for long.

JEN: I've read all about people like you.
Roaming wild, beating up anyone who
gets in your way!

YU: Writers wouldn't sell many books if
they told how it really is.

JEN: But you're just like the characters
in the stories.

YU: Sure. No place to bathe for days,
sleeping in flea-infested beds...
They tell you all about that in
those books?

I often thought of this scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when we were preparing to come to Tanzania. Genuinely well-meaning friends would tell us how exciting it must for us to do something like this...what an awesome time we were going to have.

And while it is exciting (and this is not at all meant to be a knock against friends who were and still are excited for us...we appreciate you all!), we also knew it wouldn’t be all safaris and rainbows. That “how it really is” would be a complicated mix of inconvenience and amazing grace, of frustration and helplessness in the midst of injustice, of learning and growth, and never-ending battles with biting insects and stomach upset.

Which has made us reflect on what it cost for Christ to leave the indescribable, unfathomable splendor of heaven to live among broken people in the broken world. How could He stand it? The way people treated one another, and destroyed the planet He had created to be perfect? How could he stand the ugliness, the evil and disease and oppression and poverty? Did He long to go home every second of the day?

May we find courage and strength from the example of His life given up for us! He “...who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”