Happy New Year

Happy New Year, Mrs. Calabash—wherever you are….

Six miles above the Lybian Desert I find it odd to be working on a computer. This Dell is a laptop on loan from Northern Essex Community College. And let me tell you, it is really excited to be up here with all the other elite laptops—in Africa, no less! It really enjoyed the inflight movie, too. “Cars.” It’s already begging me to take it to India next fall.

The first day of this journey (don’t you like the way the British always say “journey?” sounds so much classier than “trip!”) and no wardrobe malfunction yet. Probably that’s because I’ve been watching for it. It will get me when I’m off guard—like when I’m preaching in chapel next week.

Good thing, too. You see, I’m wearing my new Christmas shirt: RED. I wasn’t going to risk it on this long voyage. But then I figured red is part of the Kenyan flag, along with black and a bit of green and white. Maybe that will smooth my way by the customs guys in Nairobi. Not that I’ve ever had them look at anything before, But a little color psychology never hurt, hence my red shirt and my black slacks. If they question me on anything at customs, I’ve got my line at the ready. “They tell us we all came from Africa originally…. So I’m just coming home for a few days.” Think that’ll work?

Reminds me of Dr. Tim Tennent (GCTS world missions professor) telling me how on one trip he was tired (journey, I mean) of waiting in the customs line at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi airport. Seeing the “India Citizens Only” line empty, he went there. “This for Indians!” he was told. He replied in Hindi, “But India is the mother of us all!” The official smiled as he stamped the passport and waved Tim through.

On the leg from Boston to Heathrow I’m sitting in an aisle seat trying to eat my meal of Beef Broulaise, having some tea with my slice of pie. Pretty cramped as you likely know. So just when I have tea in aisle side hand, a big fat lady comes by and knocks my elbow. Yep—you guessed it. Tea all over the tray table, sloshing a little on my RED shirt! I am ready to cry! All day I have been happily humming that old song from the 50s—“All I Want for Christmas is My New Red Shirt.”

Fortunately, doubtless by some angelic intervention, this male actually had folded out a napkin (serviette here in Europe) so that most of it got absorbed. Most, not all. A little wash-up in the lav and I’m good to go, just a small damp spot by my belt that will dry in a flash in these dehydration tubes they call airliners. Ellie would have been proud!

So now I’m on the Kenya leg and am waving at Colonel Ghadaffi, a new-found friend of the USA, (once he saw that he has better chances of getting Lybia out of poverty by aligning with the west rather than sticking with his Arab brothers. As I look out the window it’s just sand dunes forever down there. No towns. No hamlets. No nuttin’. Maybe scorpions and such like. Wave after wave of silica. (I think that’s where they filmed the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt in the “Nativity” film—certainly not the Sinai Peninsula.)

I’m praying for the Muslim world. It’s a world that thinks it has the final truth about everything. We need to pray for them. Truth is, they have very little understanding of science, theology, their own” history, or even the Koran itself. I believe God is now taking the great risk of stirring the world scene so that the truth has a chance to come to the surface. I hope to contribute to that in a tiny way with my online World Religions course this spring semester.

But I know it’s hard to get people to think about things that may challenge their present worldview.

I read once that the eminent atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell (who wrote “Why I Am Not a Christian” back in the 1920s) telling how he was giving a lecture about the modern scientific worldview and how the earth spins in space in tune with the law of gravitation. In the questions that followed his lecture, a formidable British woman opined that his theory was ridiculous. “What does the world rest on?” she demanded. He asked her what her view of it was. “It’s balanced on the back a great turtle,” she replied smugly. “And what does the turtle rest on?” he queried, thinking he had her on the verge of defeat. “O no you don’t, young man!” she bristled. “I see where you are going with that question—it’s turtles all the way down!”