"Faith implies an action."
Those words spoken in French and echoed in Wolof by a young Serer pastor hung in the air like the smell of freshly baked bread. I’ve been ruminating on those words spoken from the pulpit in a small storefront church that sits along a bumpy urban dirt road where young children stop to play and stare and women carrying loads home would cautiously glance in our direction.
It is great to be back in Africa, and even in a new place we still have plenty of desert scrub and Saharan sand layering our floors and feet. Each morning we wake up to find ourselves living on this isthmus jutting into the Atlantic ocean where the shores are laden with beautiful fishing boats and the men that work them. Down the street from us is the main fish market, filled with noisome fish and wonderful people made in the image of God. Faith implies an action.
Sitting on a smooth wooden bench that Sunday morning among the faithful, these men, women and children we have dreamed of, have sought visions for, have longed to see face to face, I heard the words once more and think of Peter. Faith implies an action. A step, a confession, a casting of a net.
The only difference I can find between the Senegalese fishermen who set out each morning into the ocean breakers and that fiery fisherman from Galilee is Jesus. Peter met that preaching carpenter when Jesus stepped in his boat and began to speak (Lk. 5.3). Faith implies an action and we must ask ourselves, as followers of Jesus, if will we be found on the shore or on the waters of life in the boats of the unreached.
Although our first month in this great country has flown by us, as we drink from the open hydrant of culture, language and starting life over from the beginning, we now sing new songs, new songs of worship to the One who is the root of our faith, the carpenter King, the preaching Word, the Lord of our lives, the One who is calling us to action. We sing songs of His name and renown and we sing them in Wolof.
Thank you for your faithfulness toward our family in prayer and support acted out in love toward the Father. We are so blessed to be your personal link from the local church to the unreached peoples of Senegal! And together, as we step out in faith and cast the net of Good News over this land we will see Him create space to grow a movement of men, women and children who will soon call Him Lord!