Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

– William Martin

I was thinking through how little I know about these children when I take their initial profile picture here at CURE Zambia. For the most part, I don’t know their hopes, fears, dreams, and aspirations. I don’t know what they’ve been through or all that much about their life. There is a lot you can gather from a first impression, but there is so much more that you cannot. Dwelling on this eventually led me to playing with the photography technique of double exposures as an attempt to illustrate these feelings.

But this is my job, to get to know these children. To sit down and ask them what their dreams are, sometimes for the first time in their life. What do they hope for? What are they afraid of? What makes them happy? What makes them sad? And it is through getting to know these children that I have seen Christ.

I have much to learn from these little ones.

You Decide Dance Challenge

The You Decide Dance Challenge was an event put on by Street Culture Zambia. It pitted participants against each other in 1-on-1 dance battles in the categories of men’s hip hop freestyle, men’s jerk, and women’s hip hop freestyle. At the end of each round all observers would vote for the winner by displaying either the red of blue side of their voting card. The dancer in the corner receiving the most votes won.

 

Lessons From the World on Following Jesus

by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Jim said to me when I first met him,
“Maybe the most faithful follower of Jesus
in the 20th century was a man who
did not call himself a Christian.”
Then he told the story
of Gandhi’s experiments in truth.
“Living Christ means a living cross;
without it life is a living death.”

We stood outside the hotel in Baghdad
saying goodbye, maybe forever.
Jim looked with laughter in his eyes and said,
“It’s going to be a wonderful day.”
At Rutba the Good Iraqi showed us
what God’s love looks like
in the middle of a war.
And we were changed.

My mama told me truth is a man
called Jesus, and life is knowing Him
a little more each day.
I’ve never doubted she was right,
but I’ve seen more of Jesus in
the life of a Hindu satyagrahi,
in the embrace of a Muslim doctor,
than in most Sunday morning meetings.

Maybe this troubles you, I don’t know.
(I’ll admit is has bothered me.)
But I think of the magi, following
their gods in the stars to the crib
of a child whose people did not know him
though their Scriptures had foretold his birth.

And I recall how I learned that story,
playing the part of a shepherd boy
in a Sunday morning program when I was six.
I remember my mama, smiling.
I remember Jim’s eyes, laughing.
I remember meeting Jesus in the desert,
being saved.

originally posted here.