Not only does God provide for us during sleep, He constantly searches for us. In Chapter 2 of The Attentive Life, Leighton Ford tells the story of Vincent Donovan, a missionary to the Masai people of East Africa. In Vincent’s conversation with a Masai elder about the elder’s struggle with faith and unbelief, the elder explained that the Masai language has two words for faith: (1) one simply means to agree with something, an observable fact like “a white hunter shooting down an animal from a distance”; (2) real belief, a word that refers to a lion catching, killing, and enfolding the prey in its arms, making the prey part of itself.
The elder continued by comparing God’s search for the Masai people with Donovan’s search for the Masai people to tell them about Jesus:
“You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this . . . . We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.”
Today’s question: How does the Masai elder’s image of God as a lion searching for you impact your journey toward healing and a new vocation? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Lauds- the hour of beginnings”