God in the everyday

By Tohru Inoue | Kenya in East Africa

Representative photo via Unsplash by Anomaly

Mercy Kambura is a contributing writer and social media coordinator for AfriGO, a publication started by SIM and AIM which aims to mobilise the African church for mission. Tohru Inoue reveals how Mercy’s role makes good use of her skills, passions, and interests in furthering God’s kingdom.

Is writing a gift? Sure, Mercy enjoys it, but she wonders if it is valuable. Preaching, teaching, prophesying and church planting may be considered bona fide spiritual gifts … but writing? Mercy has been left pondering if it is important enough to continue pursuing.

But she continues to go digging in everyday life to find stories, stories which tell of what God is doing in his world, of what God is doing in the mundane, of what God is doing in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people.

If you’re going to dig for stories, why go looking in your back garden? You’re not going to find anything interesting there. No dinosaur bones, no buried treasure! Some would argue there just isn’t anything valuable there.

But Mercy looks in the sand pit at the park, in the ditch by the road. She enjoys writing about the little things she observes in everyday life that are often overlooked. She can find stories anywhere.

“Watch out! If she stares at you for three seconds, she’s writing a story about you!” her friends will tell you.

For her, stories are hidden in plain sight. What’s more, she finds God in those small commonplace details.

Once, she prepared a lunch for her daughter on an ordinary Wednesday. After toiling over it for much too long, another child carelessly knocked it to the floor as Mercy looked on helplessly. It made her mad … but she saw a story there, and it even came with a title: ‘Grace for the clumsy.’ It happened to be God’s important message for her that day.

It reminds me of another storyteller who found lessons in common, everyday things. He taught lessons of the Kingdom of God from a farmer sowing seeds, from shepherds watching their 100 sheep, from a woman losing a coin …

What more could you hope for than capturing God speaking through the ordinary? Maybe Mercy’s gift isn’t writing, as much as being able to see God in the everyday. Many people would earnestly desire a gift like that.

So, if she’s staring at you for three seconds, take heed. Maybe she’s spotted the hand of God moving right where you are. And if so, would you stay still and let her watch for a while? And when she’s done, she can tell you all about it.

Serve with us

Are you a storyteller like Mercy? We need writers, photographers, and videographers who can share about God’s work in the small moments and the big ones. Contact us today to find out how you can use your gifts to share Christ’s love in communities where he is least known.