"You Are an African"

from Katherine
Last Sunday, Pastors Themba and Lucky, our friends from Bizana, a market town about an hour from our home, invited us to visit their church. We were excited to join them and Elliott had a brief greeting in mind as you are always asked to 'bring greetings' to the congregation. When we arrived at the church, a large corrugated tin structure, Themba came to the car to greet us and asked Elliott if he had his message. Elliott was taken aback but Themba really wanted him to preach!

And preach he did - for 45 minutes. I was shocked and told Elliott he was a true African!

He preached long and loud and pointed often to his Bible just like the African preachers. He preached about God having an individual plan for each of our lives and that His plans were to 'prosper' (Jer. 29:11) us but God, not us, chose how 'prosper' was defined. Elliott then wondered whether the God that is all about a relationship with His Creation might define prosperity as our growing relationship with God. Our response to that would be to honor God by the way we chose to live out that plan (Col. 3: 22-24).