Just A Pile Of Elephant Dung

This past week I’ve been in the bush in Africa.  There’s been no TV, radio, or wifi, (hence the delay in getting out this blog) and no news of the outside world.  I’ve loved it!  Today we flew by bush plane to our next destination.  Therefore, I have opportunity for a little wifi before tomorrow morning when I’m back to the bush for more adventure!

This past week we’ve been up close to elephants, lions, leopards, wildebeests, zebra, hyenas and jackals.  Oh, what an amazing adventure God is allowing me to have.  Several nights I have awoken to a crunching sound.  I sat up in bed, peered out the mesh widows of my tent, and what did I see?  Zebras and wildebeests all around!  It was a full moon so I could watch them grazing and moving slowly about.  I was careful not to move so as not to make any noise.  I didn’t want to scare them away.  Those moments in the night were breathtaking for me.  I could never have imagined having such an experience.

The other day I had a new experience, too.  I was walking around our campsite after a long hot day of searching for various animals.  As I stretched my legs I noticed something in the distance.  My heart began to race.  Was it a jackal hunched down in the grass? One of the other team members came over and suspected it could even be a lion; but upon further investigation, lo and behold, it was just a pile of elephant dung.  What a laugh we had.  It has now become a standing joke.

By contrast, our guides are remarkable in their ability to scout an animal and identify its whereabouts.  They spy lions sleeping atop rocky cliffs when my untrained eyes only see rocks.  They take note of leopards straddling tree limbs when I only see the leaves.  My lack of practice thought I saw a jackal when it turned out to be elephant dung.  These guides have studied and practiced a long time to be so skilled.

I have reminded myself that it’s the same in our spiritual worlds.  How often have people claimed that God wasn’t helping them, when actually they just couldn’t see that He was waiting for perfect timing to bless them to the full?  How many times have people believed God had abandoned them, when actually He was sending all manner of help to comfort and aid them?  They just coudn’t recognize it.

So many times in my life I’ve heard people blaming God for all sorts of things when I knew that in reality, the person giving blame, rarely took time to commune with God or to listen to Him.  If we don’t give time to getting to know God, then it stands to reason that we will not adequately recognize His ways.  Developing spiritual eyesight doesn’t come over night.  It takes time and practice, like guides in the African bush.  If you and I don’t give adequate time to developing our spiritual eyesight, we’ll see something, say it’s God, and all it will be is an equilavant to a pile of elephant dung.