A Text to the Unexpected

Sometime during the New Year’s Eve party in 2014 as I played ‘telephone pictionary’ with some of my fellow co-workers and friends, my cell phone chimed and alerted me to a text.  In this technologically bound society most people would not think this odd or strange but I did.  I wonder who sent me a message before the New Year? was my initial thought.  Normally, I do not receive an abundance of texts, except from work or around holidays when my family will wish a “Merry Christmas” or the expected “Happy New Year,” which would fall a couple hours from then.

I snuck my hand into my pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and read the text: “Jeff, I’m not sure if you are on Facebook but my wife and I wanted to know if you would like to go to Uganda with her.  Little Hands can flip the bill…leaving in March.”  I reread the text to make sure I understood the entirety of it.  It came from my best friend from college, Tom Johnson.  About a year ago, his wife, Kristen, journeyed to Uganda, saw the needs of street children and orphans, and began an organization called Little Hands of Hope to feed and care for such children. 

Now I was strangely invited to Uganda.

Uganda?  Somewhere in Africa, I knew, but couldn’t place the exact location. 

March?  Three months away.

“Ok…let me pray about it.”  I typed back on my cell phone.

Uganda?  Surprise.  The invitation to Uganda flew under my mental radar as a country to consider on the edge of a New Year.  Unexpected.  Unforeseen.  This small text would later grow as I first prayed and then accepted the invitation, traveled to receive my shots, and blossom into a ten to twelve day adventure in Uganda. 

This small text began to chart the course of the New Year for me and would leave a pensive aftertaste in my mind and heart during the weeks that followed it.  Such is the reality of small things though.  Small things or words often change the course of our lives or affect them greatly without our knowing. They come in unnoticed and uninvited but decide to stay with our conscience and linger with our minds, dinning with them until they set up residence in our hearts. 

Yet it is not the nature of a small thing or word to remain such.  A small acorn when planted will grow into its destined oak tree in time and with the proper conditions.  A small word can affect a child greatly, whether for good or bad.  A small thought will produce an action.  A small action has the ability to produce a habit, which will quickly become a lifestyle if left unhindered.  Indeed, as the Prophet Zechariah said centuries ago: “Who dares despise the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10)

And so the adventure to Uganda began with a text on that cold New Year’s Eve…