Grandma’s and Birdboxes
At our recent NLT and trustees retreat we brought out the big guns and asked Denis Adide to reflect for us on what he had seen and heard and how we might need to reflect as a mission agency based in the West as we send out Learning Cohorts on teams around the world. Denis went one better and brought Sadiya Yasmin with him, an ordinand with an exciting faith journey, who fit in perfectly.
Denis poetically summarises what he has seen and heard from our SOMA leaders day together, watched by David McDougall, Sarah Brown, Danny Rodgers, Sadiya Yasmin and Rachael Sanya.
Denis’s reflection dripped with poetry, wisdom and a sense of being a fathering presence in a room he was superbly equipped to speak to. He began by reflecting on the rich theological and inspirational messages from Helen and Barney, and the prayer and fellowship we had together, before offering two stories for us to think on. These are really important for anyone thinking about going on team.
Denis talked about his Ugandan grandmother, one of many wives of a chief in a polygamous society, whose life in that community was marked by a radical hospitality that meant that the house Denis knew growing up was full of people not related to him by blood, as well as a fair number of doppelgängers among Denis’ extended family. Growing up Denis had known that his grandmother was a woman of extraordinary faith, but he said, ‘I just didn't understand it fully till my life was sold out to Christ.’ I realised late how pivotal her example was of,’ and that he had been marked out by her to pray for especially. She died when he was a teenager, ‘never seeing me develop as a Jesus lover.’ So she never knew how his story has developed and how he is now in ministry as Vicar of St Stephen’s Shepherd’s Bush.
He told us about her both to encourage us all never to give up in prayer… many prayers may be answered after we are long gone from this mortal life, but also to remind us as we visit other contexts that, ‘you are walking old paths with new footsteps.’
Key then is to recognise what the old footsteps did. These footsteps may have been good or bad. There is the good of the prayerful grandma who went before you. There is the evil imprint of the outsider decision makers who left a tribe straddled across a newly imposed national border. So as you visit you may be entering an environment crafted by real structural evil, but it will never be a place God hasn’t seen before. Denis charged us to see ourselves as going somewhere God has been already active across the ages. To be sensitive to see what is going on as we wander in, so that every word we offer and action taken is redemption not a fresh wound. But also to have a confidence that you will meet with people to whom you will be a gift… and that our very difference in visiting places that we are not from is a gift. Indeed there is a necessity of difference. A gift of being somewhere else, a gift of bringing a different anguish, a different viewpoint, a different anger, a fresh righteous indignation to walk into.
He also told a story from London of building bridge boxes with his joy filled young son. They each put a box together, and Denis was put together with adult precision, whereas his son inexpertly ‘butchered his nails’. Yet as a Dad he was so proud of his son he put it on the tree as it was. And, here’s the punchline - the birds don’t care… they’re super happy to nest in both boxes. The quality of the finish and hammering is not an issue for the wrens and robins.
The point he went on to say is that when we step out with our heavenly Dad and join in what he is doing the gift he is giving to us is time with Dad. It’s not about the bird box, it’s about the time. It doesn’t rely on us getting it right… the main thing is to be spending time with your Dad… and the birds don’t care if the box is a little mangled.
Denis concluded by saying if you let the highs be very high and the lows very low you miss the wonderful tuneful hum of God’s symphony in the middle - we need to meet elation and depression with all the joy of heaven not the drug of happiness… when God works and you see it great, when you don’t see it doesn’t mean he has stopped.
We are so grateful to get to learn with Denis and Sadiya today and praising the Lord for all their ministry now and into the future.
