“Everybody is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.”
The flight to Nairobi from Seattle is long, I mean REALLY long. It’s a seventeen hour, two leg journey with a four hour layover in Amsterdam. Needless to say, I brought some reading material. Besides brushing up on a few sermons and catching up on a few movies, I’m reading “Before the Fall”, the latest thriller from a writer who has become popular as of late, Noah Hawley. The quote above captures the basic plot of the book, several characters end up boarding a chartered flight, seemingly together by coincidence, when unexpectantly the plane falls from the sky crashing into the ocean. It’s perfect reading material for travel by plane.
I wasn’t supposed to be going to Kenya this week. At least, that wasn’t the original plan. I’m taking Pastor Richard’s place as he quickly realized he was not going to recover in time from knee replacement surgery. Things fell into place quickly and here I am on this flight. I’m making a few notes on two sermons I’ll be speaking tomorrow at Kimbo PEFA church. I’m making sure they will translate well to Kenyan culture. The lady sitting next to me asks me a few questions as I type. She is Kenyan, but she has lived in Seattle the past thirteen years. She’s visiting her family in Kenya with her sixteen year old daughter. It’s a trip they take every other year. As it would turn out she’s a Christian, her family lives within walking distance of The Kimbo PEFA church, and to top it off her father was a founding member of the church. She was planning on attending the service on Sunday and now she’s sitting next to the guest speaking pastor who is from her American home in Seattle.
I was tired, exhausted, questioning how fresh I would be for a long day tomorrow, but now I’ve got goose bumps. I’m getting the feeling this is just the tip of the iceburg for divine appointments and powerful experiences these next few weeks. God is good!