Amy and I arrived at Bongolo Hospital safe and sound yesterday afternoon. Mike (clinical engineer) and Sharon (accountant) are traveling with us to serve at the hospital as well. The last leg of travel is by small airplane from Libreville to Bongolo and takes about 1.5 hours, much easier than the path by road. God has blessed the hospital with the airplane and pilot. It is wonderful to fly, avoiding the 10 hour trip by road. It is long, dusty, bumpy and inconvenient, especially after traveling many hours to get to Gabon. Most of the time during the short flight you get great views of a beautiful county including lush tropical jungle, rivers, and small towns and villages. If you look close enough, you can even see people. It was on a flight like this that God called me to serve at Bongolo.
On yesterday's flight the skies were overcast and we were above the cloud cover. Even though we were flying at the same low altitude, we couldn't see anything--just cloud cover. No jungle, no countryside, no beauty, and no people. As I was peering out the window, God spoke to me again on this flight. As Christians do we spend most of our lives flying above the cloud cover? We like the convenient, quick, fast and clean routes of life. Yet, we cannot see the people below who are hurting and lost. We cannot see God's beauty because we are not even looking.
My prayer for this trip and life is to get below the clouds, take the inconvenient, tough, longer, route. That's where we see the people and their hurts and lostness. That's were we see God.
