The Table: Loving the Strange and Stranger

Ate a plate of Warthog, Antelope and Crocodile tonight at a restaurant here in Cape Town. Loved every strange bit of it. Worthog, worthog, worthog -- it just rolls off my tongue. Like I've been eating it forever. "I think I'll have the worthog tonight," as if I had ordered it a thousand times. I swear it wasn't just the novelty of it, although that's initially what appealed to me. But I'll remember it because the taste spoke to my senses in a way that made my normal diet feel as if I had been eating sand.

As I prepare to serve at the third ever Lausanne World Congress here in South Africa I am asking the Lord to give me new appetites and tastes. I join more than 4,000 delegates from around the world who gather at "the table" (a metaphor referencing the giant plateau known as Table Mountain in Cape Town) of the Lord as His sends the food of his word to his people for the transformation of the world.

But the new menu at this table is definitely strange. And I am convinced that it is not the strangeness that is attractive. There is an aspect of the interaction with a new food that involves risk, and its a little uncomfortable. But the taste is its own reward.

Last night on the street I was approached by a young woman asking for money. I asked her name, and she said "Donna." But after 30 seconds of conversation it began to dawn on me that Donna was a young man. After having spent a late night last year on the streets of San Jose Costa Rica ministering to transvestites, I began to realize Donna's identity and took a moment to pray for her. It was an unusual conversation -- stood out for it's strangeness. But there on the street corner praying with my hand on her/his shoulder, this felt like a new meal. Risk taken. The reward of the risk, a deep satisfaction.

I am not addicted to strangeness. In some sense I do choose it out of a sense that this is often where I find Jesus. I find myself writing about it often because its taste jolts my dulled senses so much. But more often than not, it seems like it is strangeness that chooses me. Perhaps it is a confrontation that I need.

Because the location of a meeting we attended after my dinner of warthog tonight it was not safe to walk alone, so another male delegate and I accompanied two young female delegates to their hotels for safety. It turns out that one of them was the daughter of a Christian leader in Mexico City that I have partnered with over the years. I have been in her home celebrating their amazing ministry among the urban poor of their city. The strange, miraculous circumstances I often find myself in seem to me to be orchestrated by a heavenly chef. And tonight was like desert.