I am ready to return to Africa. I'd go back in a minute...but with one substantial difference. This time I would go without a camera. This time I would travel sans photo equipment. There were times on that first memorable trip when I had the disconcerting sensation that I was viewing that exotic country not with my own eyes but through a telephoto lens. It was like watching it all on CNN. I to had force myself to put down the Nikon and just experience the place without thinking that here would be a great shot to show the folks back home or this will go over big at the church slide show. Once again, my wife showed me who was the wiser by attending everywhere I attended but without a camera. Her memories have a kind of vastness to them that mine are lacking. She could take in the periphery while I was limited to the specific. I suppose that makes us a good pair but next time I know what I'm not going to do.

Such a realization has theological overtones, of course. They begin with a gnawing awareness of how too often we who claim to be Christians find ourselves so focused on the future that we fail to realize the abundance that is all around us. Since its very inception, Christianity has been plagued with a mentality that often suggests that this present life of ours doesn't matter at all. That the only thing worth living for is what happens to us after we stop living. We all can think of examples where well-meaning but ill-thinking Christians have even suggested to grieving survivors that it is really better that their loved one is dead because now they enjoy the benefits of heaven. I have heard with my own ears that very sentiment shared with grieving parents over the loss of a child. Not only is such theology profoundly sick, it is equally not Christian.

Using such logic, one would have to ask why Jesus ever fed the five thousand or raised Lazarus from the dead or healed the centurion's little daughter. Why not let the people starve to death, or leave Lazarus where he was and let that little girl die of her disease? Such a sick theology denies the very sentiment of our God..."God saw everything that God had made and indeed it was very good." A proper theology, a healthy theology, a Christian theology, knows that this life is a gift from God and that we are called to live it fully and live it well.