I got robbed in Nairobi!

Week 6 and I've just returned from a quick trip to Nairobi, Kenya.
Again I return because too easily I forget how the majority of our world brothers and sisters live.

Seems rather ironic that we have to spend nearly $2K on trip costs to remember that over 70% of the world live on less than $2 a day.
Ask the four young guys who lead the Furaha Community Foundation that we partner with in the Huruma slum or any of their 23 employees and they will tell you that for "mzungus" (white people) to care enough about them to visit them ...... is better than sending more money to them. In a culture where relationships are more precious than money somethings truly are priceless.

As I return from another trip it is too easy for me to ignore how far away we were.
Eerily we flew over Cairo, Egypt as the country below us was sitting on the edge of a revolution. Just hours earlier we had flown at 36,000ft over Darfur seeing its sprawling sand hills - unable to see the pain on a people who had and are experiencing modern day genocide ..... sadly the world flies over it too with politicians ignoring the reality. We watched as Vienna lit up in the early evening and its huge cartwheel shaped road pattern distinguished it from the other European cities we passed. With nightfall on us we landed in the cosmopolitan capital of the world - London with its 9 million people representing over 270 nationalities.

The sad thing is I'd seen it all before and the awe of how far we were from home and what we were seeing no longer gave me chills.

Some say familiarity breeds contempt. For me, it just breeds ordinariness.
Maybe that's sadder.
When the sense of wonder, awe and excitement get diluted, life shrinks down to your size.
When life becomes your size - ordinary is too grand a word to describe the pettiness of your existence.

Of course, where ordinariness is the norm, faith is extinct.
Faith only exists in the world of extraordinary. Ordinary has no need of faith - it is content to remain where it is.

That is always the challenge of Kenya.
How do you prevent the regularity of visiting robbing you of the faith needed to visit?

Same is true in your life, in your context.

The challenge is to prevent the theft.
The need is to be wise to the thief.
The technique is to protect your soul.