Because You Know

Because you know.  Barring any complication, it will have taken sixty hours to get from Goldsboro, USA, to Tete, Mozambique. This is the 56th hour. When or if the Wi-Fi will turn on, no one knows. 

What constitutes sixty hours? To a child, sixty hours is cruel and unusual punishment, especially if that time is spent in a booster seat in the family minivan. To an old man, sixty hours may the unit of time between gin rummy with the boys and physical therapy with Nurse Ratched. To a young man, sixty hours spent doing mostly anything other than being productive is a colossal waste. For me, no longer young yet not wise enough to be considered old, sixty hours away from hearth and home is the saddest span of time with nothing to filter out that which lurks in the back of my mind among the cobwebs. But sixty hours seems to be the price to pay the boatman to cross the river into missions in southern Africa. I gladly pay the fee because there are little children, fathers, and young men in Mozambique with (currently) no one to teach them of “him who is from the beginning” (1 John 2:13, 14). 

I have traveled alongside two groups of people so far inside these sixty hours: those who traveled to America from South Africa for the Masters golf tournament and those who travel from America to South Africa for big game hunting. It might be overly reductionist to say, but it seems like I have more in common with the pastors in grass-thatched huts to whom I will teach the attributes of God—his person, power, and perfections—than with trophy seekers and trophy hunters. (I hope there are embedded servants of Christ in those affluent subcultures as much as in the rural north of Mozambique.)

But the living parable acted out in front of my eyes between airports is that every slice of society has a next step of growth. And I won’t disparage anyone’s next step. I can’t, because I am still growing, and because growth is worship, and worship is Christ’s own due reward.

The Apostle John’s admonition is highly versatile when he said in triplicate, and twice, “I am writing to you, little children…fathers…young men” (1 John 2:12-14). In particular, he said to the fathers, “I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.” How curious and profound—he teaches again what they already know! There is more to learn. The little children know the Father also, but there is more to learn. The young men know about bravery and conflict, but there is more to learn. Knowing God is tremendously different than knowing about God. I have much to learn, too. 

We are all going from somewhere to somewhere else but may we each grow as we go! “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18).