Fataf makes me smile – mostly because he is so innocent, or appears to be.
I met him in Togo.
He made me hot chocolate.
There are not too many people who have taken me for a ride on a motorcycle.
He is one of them.
There is no one else with whom I have the exact same shirt — well, almost. Mine has short sleeves while his shirt is more formal, long sleeves – but yes, we have the same shirt, made by the same tailor on the same day. There are not too many people who have made me a hot chocolate drink on a warm night in west Africa. Fataf is one of the two such people.
He’s a warm and friendly human. I think he loves people. It seems to me he understands what it means to hear and obey God, or at least he is learning.
What makes me smile is that young men and women who want to hear and listen to God are so keen to hear and listen to God that the keenness often blocks their ears and blinds their eyes.
They seem to want God to speak in some unusual way – so they will really KNOW it is God.
It is easy, I suppose, to forget that God is always speaking and speaking through the ordinary, the things we miss or see so often that it’s easy to not see. If a man walks past the most beautiful tree in the world at the same time every day he may stop really seeing it after a week or so.
Some people live so close to the ocean they stop admiring it.
Maybe even Beethoven’s family got tired of hearing him play the piano.
God is speaking loudly and sweetly with every sunset, every laughing child.
God is speaking through a cup of hot chocolate made with love on a warm west-African night for a stranger who came on a plane from a far-off land to do more than drink a warm drink and nag for Internet access.
Sometimes a cup of hot chocolate is as powerful among those who believe as bread broken and wine, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of rebellion.
“This is my Body, the Body of Christ.”
God is speaking.
Always.
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