The Man in the Maize Field

Or a Godscidence, not a coincidence

Photo by Steve Mitchell

This is a 21-hour flight story. Boston to Gatwick, Gatwick to Oman, Oman to Nairobi. By the time we landed in Kenya, my body had stopped asking what time it was and started asking more fundamental questions. We loaded into beaten Toyota Land Cruisers and set off for an 8-hour trip across the country toward Lake Victoria.

Sleep deprivation removes your defenses. The Rift Valley came at me through the window, and I had nothing to push back with. We stopped at a tea house for lunch while watching people walk along the road. Everywhere. Matatus was overloaded with passengers and certainty. The scale of everything. I was stunned in a way that felt permanent.

We finally arrived in Homa Bay. I remember waking up to weaver birds and the smell of fish cooked over a coal fire drifting through the mosquito netting. Not a bad way to start a morning on a different continent.

At some point our group climbed into a boat on Lake Victoria. Leaky is the word I’d use. It was kind of like a floating colander that hopefully strained out the Bilharzia parasite that Lake Victoria is known for. The hippos watched us from the water with the indifference of animals that know they’re the most dangerous thing in the vicinity. They are, by the way. We made it to Mfangano Island and possibly Rusinga. The memory has the texture of thirty years and long equatorial days. We came ashore.

Then we just walked. One of the Baptist pastors there led us around to talk with people, invite them to his church, explain what it meant to be saved by the grace of Jesus. No program. No production. Just walking up to people.

I’m a born Texan living in California, which means I’ve known my share of grace and I don’t embarrass easily. But I was not prepared for what happened in the maize field near a man’s home.

I told him why we were there. I gave him a testimony. God made everything for us to enjoy. He loved us enough to send his Son. Jesus died and rose, and his sacrifice covered every failure and every debt. The plan of salvation, standing in someone’s maize field, through a translator, on a Tuesday afternoon in Kenya.

The man listened. Then he told me something.

He said that, that morning, he had been standing there, wondering what his life had become. Why he was still here after all these years? He had been asking who made the world around him. Who put it together, and whether any of it meant anything.

And then I walked up.

I call that a Godscidence, not a coincidence—a set appointment by God from before the beginning of time.

A 21-hour flight. Four stops. Beaten Toyota Land Cruisers across the Rift Valley. A leaky boat past watching hippos. A walk with a pastor through a village on an island in Lake Victoria. A Tuesday afternoon. A maize field. Two men who had no earthly reason to be standing there together at that specific moment.

God didn’t need my travel agent. He didn’t need my timeline. He needed me to show up, and he arranged everything else.

We got on our knees in that field and prayed. I don’t remember exactly what was said. I remember that a man who woke up that morning without answers went to sleep that night with them.

I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

I think about that Tuesday when I’m convinced God has forgotten me. When my plans aren’t working and the ones I thought he made don’t seem to be either. The memory surfaces without warning. Not as comfort, exactly. As evidence.

God can do anything. He can move a man from Texas to California, to Kenya, to a maize field on a Tuesday afternoon, to answer a question an old man asked that morning. He doesn’t need our logistics. He seems to prefer working without them.

Today may be that day for you. It might not be the day everything resolves, because it feels like nothing is happening. That may still be coming. But it might be the day something gets answered. And it will happen all at once.

Keep your eyes open. The person walking toward you may not know they’ve been sent.

But someone does.

Steven Mitchell is a freelance content writer and strategist based in South Orange County, California. He writes about faith, fatherhood, and the work of building something from scratch at CreativeGuySteve.com.

Suma Narayan writes about finding God on a wet and gloomy winter day — not in anything dramatic, but in trees being planted outside her window. The man in the maize field was having his own kind of gloomy morning. God showed up for him anyway. He tends to work like that.

[embed]Gratitude to God On a wet and gloomy winter daymedium.com

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