Swings

As for everyone there’s good days and bad days. Yesterday turned out to be pretty good in a different way. Power outages are fairly common thing here. It’s always a guessing game as to when the power will come back on. Sometimes is a couple hours and sometimes a couple days. The novelty of the ohh I’m in Africa, I’m going to have to read by candle light tonight had worn off about 6 months earlier and on this particular day, the novelty factor wore off about 4 hours earlier. After about 2 and a half hours of reading by candle light, I was about done. Also, this entire time you’re wondering when the power is going to come on. Then you have to start thinking of alternatives for dinner. You seem to always have 3 options: collect firewood in the dark to start a fire to cook (not doing again), east what little snacks and crackers you have or make the 5k trek to town. After a full day of teaching, none of these are ideal. So after reading I threw on my ipod to mix it up a little bit (I know I’m a jerk face and it isn’t so bad, I a freakin ipod) and started a countdown on my decision to trek it to town. About four songs in, to be honest, I had hit a low point, where I was just tired, hungry and didn’t want to deal with anything. Almost on cue, my ipod that was set on shuffle played this song out of the thousands of songs I have:

“Blessed is this life and I’m going to celebrate being alive”

If that’s not an omen, I don’t know what is. I kid you not, this one little song playing at the right time, changed my mood entirely. We ended up making the trek to town to eat and it was great. On this particular night, the skies ended being clear and the moon low, allowing you to see a million and one stars. I am attaching a map of earth at night below. You see that dark area usually called Africa, that where I live. Then multiply that by having all of the power out as far as you can see. This makes things so dark that you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. This also makes the million stars sparkle brighter than I have ever seen them before. It’s moments like these that confirm my creator. Not a creator who is static and distant but something more. It just makes me say ahh I’m not alone here and I feel that this creator is good. Regardless of how many people have misconstrued his name, he’s there to continually whisper good in your ear. Also this didn’t come through a change in situation. The power was still out, I was still hungry but the reminder of more being there brought change in me. Things aren’t bad, some of it is the mindset we are in.

This morning I woke up to the power returning and meditated on what negative mindsets might be clouding my perspective of the world and what I can do to bring God’s peaceful kingdom on earth.