Inevitable Change

     There is a story told about a man from the back mountains of Tennessee who found himself one day in a large city, for the first time standing outside an elevator. He watched as an old, haggard woman hobbled on, and the doors closed. A few minutes later the doors opened and a young, attractive woman marched smartly off. The father hollered to his youngest son, "Billy, go get mother."

     Now as funny as that story may seem, we all have things in our lives that we wish we could change.  Now hopefully our "thing(s)" is not like the man from the back mountains of Tennessee.  In saying this, we all know that change in our lives is inevitable.  We all age and feel our bodies begin to ache and show the lines of our age.  We all know that eventually our children will grow up, go to college, get a job, get married and have children.  We all know that people will move in and out of our lives, changing the dynamics of our relationships and increasing the complexity of the ways that we communicate in those relationships.  So am i basically stating the fact that we all know: change is inevitable!

Mary Shiko, former MITS student, helping me in Bible class.
Shiko currently has a great job up near Kisumu teaching
catering.  Awesome Christian young lady!

     One of those inevitable changes that i have come to learn about and witness first hand here at MITS is that our older students will eventually graduate and we will definitely take on newer students straight from the streets.  I had become accustomed to all the kids i knew very well over the past year.  I knew how to handle them in class, i knew how to speak to them to get the best out of them, i knew how to encourage them, i knew how to console them.  But now . . . everything has changed.  Many of our older students have graduated and moved on to jobs in the city.  Many of the literacy students have moved on to skills training and my time with them has become very limited.  And now our dorms and my classes are filled with faces that i hardly know.  New kids and some that speak very limited English.  Young, smiling and unaware of the expectations that are being placed on them or the rules that they have to live under at MITS.

     Although this has been a challenge for me it has also been refreshing to witness the ways that God is changing people.  The ways that these kids grow into expectations and the ways that they are transformed with love and guidance in their life.  It's like watching a beautiful butterfly as it breaks its way out of a cocoon . . . struggling, fighting, until at last it has the strength to overcome the struggle, break free of its cocoon and open its wings to the wide, beautiful world around it.  That is the living picture of these kids here at Made In The Streets.  When these kids come to us they are lost . . . they don't know the Lord and they don't understand that God loves them and has a plan for them.  As they begin to discover these facts about God and themselves they begin to bloom.  They begin to understand that there is a purpose to their lives, that they should be living for something.  They understand that the past struggles they faced in the streets helped to shape and mold them into what God wants to use them for in His future.  The break free of that cocoon (MITS) and realize the gifts and skills that they have been given not only come from God but serve a wider purpose of service in the immediate kingdom of Nairobi.  And despite all of these challenging changes, it is amazing to witness the different ways that God changes lives.

     So today i want you to be challenged to know that God is working on you this very moment.  There is something that he wants to change in you . . . to make you more holy, to make you more like Him.  Paul writes about our transformation in 2 Corinthians:

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?  If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!  For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory.  And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!  Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.  We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.  But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.  Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.  But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:7-18).

Paul is explaining to us that the ministry that we have in Christ is better than the old covenant.  That the spirit of the Lord, the same one working on these kids lives here in Kenya, is alive and active and is transforming you everyday more into the image of Jesus!  And know that Spirit can do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us" (Eph. 3:20), as i have witnessed with these kids, if we will trust in and hold onto the name of Jesus.