The Wise Man of Eldoret, Kenya

“Although the scribes could explain where the Messiah should be born, they remained quite unperturbed in Jerusalem. They did not accompany the Wise Men to seek him. Similarly we may be able to explain every article of our faith, yet remain spiritually motionless. The power that moved heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved.

What a contrast! The three kings had only a rumor to go by. But it spurred them to set out on a long, hard journey. The scribes, meanwhile, were much better informed, much better versed. They had sat and studied the scriptures for years, like so many dons. But it didn’t make any difference. Who had the more truth? Those who followed a rumor, or those who remained sitting, satisfied with all their knowledge?”
- Søren Kierkegaard

Last night I was on the phone with my Mom as the sky darkened. I told her I’d have to call her back. Before it was too late I rustled up everyone to go outside and see Saturn and Jupiter converge. No one on earth has seen it like this for hundreds of years. The last time they appeared so close, our ancestors did not even know what to make of these wandering stars in the sky, which is how we got the word, planets, which means “wanderers” in Greek. Our family would only have mere minutes to see them appear before they would wander back into the darkness again.

As we walked excitedly up the ramp in front of our apartment building it took no time for us to spot it. The sky was perfectly dark except for these two planets, appearing as almost one bright star. Locals call it the Bethlehem Star after the story of the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew. Supposedly, what the Magi saw in their western sky when Christ was born was even brighter than what we witnessed last night.

And so while traffic flew around our family as we stood and gawked for minutes at an ordinary sky with a tiny unordinary spark of light, I thought of the Magi, and, thanks to Kierkegaard, I also thought of all the scribes and scholars at Herod’s beck and call in Jerusalem. They all knew where the Messiah was to be born. They all heard from the Magi about the star. But they stayed at the palace, in Jerusalem. They were not moved.

My father-in-law, Randy Stirewalt, died earlier this year. He invested over forty years of his life as a missionary in Kenya. Just flying to Kenya is exhausting, and once you land there it is only the beginning. The car rides are somehow even worse. The good roads are as perilous as the bad ones, just in different ways. There’s thieves, bumps, potholes the size of refrigerators, pop-up creeks, and if it rains mud will overtake the earth, capable of gobbling up an entire wheel of your car.

I only visited Kenya for a month, and I got tired of all the moving there. Maybe Randy did too, but that never stopped him. I had been around him in the States plenty. He liked to rest, watch sports on television, and talk about the news. But in Kenya he was a completely different man. Like the prophet Jeremiah, there was a fire that burned deep and hot inside of Randy when he was in Kenya. Only his death could extinguish it.

Randy’s home office in Kenya had a couple desks, a computer, some books, and there on the wall were two papers. No frames or fuss, just fading paper and Kenyan tape. The top one was a quote from A. W. Tozer that said, “God is looking for [people] through whom he can do the impossible - what a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.” And underneath that, some time later, judging by how worn the papers are, he taped up another one that said, “You don’t grow by gaining biblical knowledge; you grow by applying it.”

When missionaries tell stories about what leads us to far off places you will discover that like the Magi we also had only a rumor to go by. Randy was from a small town in Southwest Missouri. He served as a pastor in Illinois and Texas and had even thought seriously about going to Bolivia, but one of his former colleagues convinced him to come to Kenya. And the rest is history.

Once there, Randy moved. Over the years the network of churches and pastors he worked with spread to three countries, several Bible institutes, and thousands of congregations. Sure, he gained plenty of biblical knowledge while on the mission field, but what made him a useful missionary was applying it - being moved by it.

And so last night in the warm December air of Brazil, surrounded by my family, whom I wouldn’t have were it not for Randy, I looked up at those converging planets and thought not only of the wise men of old, but the wise man who used to live Eldoret, Kenya.

And I miss him, especially as this is our first Christmas without him.

But there is the tiniest bit of comfort in knowing that I have been moved by him. Who knows? Maybe someday someone will be moved by me. After all, it was only a rumor that brought me and my family to Brazil, and that’s how the gospel moves from generation to generation.

*The two pictures in this post were taken by Shaun Vance