Safari

Monday and Tuesday of this week, we took our volunteers to Murchison Falls National Park. We were looking forward to some quiet and much-needed days away from the craziness and ever-changing “routine” of life in Arua. My prayer as we left town was, “Lord, I want to glory in what You have made. Help me to love You more because of what I experience here.” And I have walked away praising Him, loving Him, and somehow changed by what I have seen.

I am in awe of my amazing Creator! Seeing the pictures in magazines and watching video clips on TV and YouTube give you a beginning idea of what it is like, but nothing could truly prepare me for this place. To ride for hours through the wilderness, straining your eyes for anything that could possibly be a lion. (I think God taught termites to build their mounds to look like lions, by the way!) To have a family of elephants join you at the hotel for dinner. To watch a baboon hang out on the hood of a car. To ride in a boat down the Nile River searching for hippos and crocs… and find more than you could ever hope to count! To realize that gazelles are unbelievably beautiful animals, and are even more so when they run. To spot paw prints in the sand that are 9 inches across. To drive up on two giraffes about to mate right next to the road. (Shyness and stage fright took over, sadly!) And to walk right up the Murchison Falls, where the entire Nile River channels into a waterfall only 7 meters wide… to see such amazing power and beauty and majesty, to feel the spray of this water on your face, to glimpse the rainbow of the Creator’s promise of protection, to know that the One who imagined all of this splendor is so much bigger, that what you have seen and can barely comprehend is but a tiny fraction of what He is truly capable of.

When God created Africa, in its innocent, wild, untouched form, He was showing off. I think the Trinity looked at each other and said something to the effect of, “What should We put here? Let’s see just how impressive We can be.” And the result is miles and miles of savannah, scrub trees, palms, oasis, and some of the coolest animals on the planet… just because they could! How could anyone think that all of this, this amazing symbiosis of plants and animals, insects and predators and grazers and scavengers all keeping each other in check, this glimpse into what our planet once looked like, how it was intended to be, this all happened by accident? I just can’t buy it. Not after walking where I’ve walked.