The First

Hello to all of you out there in Internet-land!

This is my first ever blog post so excuse any peculiarities of format or design. Think of me as a new born calf still stumbling around, trying to figure out just what exactly these things called "legs" are.

There is and will be much more to come but I'd like to start with this:

For I am but a sojourner with you
A wayfarer, as all my forebears were
(Psalm 39:17)

I initially chose the title of this blog rather flippantly; I'm a fan of alliteration and it seemed an accurate enough portrayal of what will be a relatively brief stay in South Africa. My length of visit is specified and intentionally limited; I am not putting down roots. Yet as the dust from my quick decision settled and it dawned on me more fully that this was the title of what will be a primary link between me and many of the family, friends and well-wishers I have back home the significance of it all clarified. And with that clarity came this, psalm 39.

It is not the happiest psalms (see verse 5) and the sojourn to which the psalmist refers is certainly more consequential than a year spent as an international missionary but as I sit with it the title feels more and more appropriate. On the most basic level I am a sojourner; nothing about YASC is indefinite and as Psalm 39:17 indicates, all those who proceeded me were 'wayfarers' too. This is particularly applicable to my circumstance as I am to be the eleventh YASC assigned missionary at Mariya uMama weThemba, one in a long line of young, devoted, idealistic Christians.

The temptation is to insert "another" into that phrase, to belittle oneself with the vastness of an enterprise. What is (another) one next to so many? The implied answer is nothing. It is that sense of insignificance that the psalmist is succumbing to here, taking humility to its self-denying extreme. But as I live into this next chapter of my life, that mentality is what I happily shrug off. I am one of many (YASCers, Christians, Humans) striving to do God's work in my daily life, a single link in a continuous chain pulling upward.