Seeing With New Eyes

Kes Tariku is the President of the Illubabor Bethel Synod and a wonderful Christian leader.  In Ethiopia the title "Kes" (pronounced like "case") means "Pastor."  When he was visiting our presbytery last November, I had the opportunity to spend a few days with him.  On the first day we were together he had lunch with the Mountain Valley Mission Community (MVMC) pastors, and that afternoon and evening I took him to visit three of our  mission community churches:  Strasburg, Woodstock and Nineveh.

The situation in each of these churches was very different:  Strasburg was recovering from a devastating fire; Woodstock was working on completing its new addition, and Nineveh was involved in a congregational discernment process to envision its future.  Yet in each case, after visiting each church and learning some of the specifics of what was happening in each different situation, Tariku came to the same conclusion:  "God is working here."

It was an insight that sometimes surprised us.  In dealing with the tremendous loss caused by a church fire, for example, we might be more likely to feel that God has abandoned us rather than that God is at work in the midst of this.  Or for a small church that is without a major crisis or a major project at the moment, it might be more tempting to think that God is paying attention to some other situation, not ours.  But in each case Tariku was able to see and to sense that God was at work in ways that he said "touched his heart."  Sometimes it takes "new eyes" to see things in new ways:  things that we might not have paid attention to, or that perhaps were so familiar that we began to take them for granted.

One of the benefits of our Ethiopian partnership through the years is that both we and our partners get to see things through "new eyes". In the next three posts to this blog I will tell you each of the stories of what happened in each of those three churches on that day in November.  I know that Tariku visited other churches in our Presbytery during his visit, and I am curious to know what stories others of you have to share about your time together with him and what his "new eyes" helped you to see in your church.