(In honor of International Women’s Day, I’ll share one of the lessons Kenyan women taught me).

She bends low and pushes a seed deep into the soil. All around her what was once hard and cracked is softened and ready to receive what’s planted in hope.

She steps and stoops. And her brown fingers push hope into what’s been tilled and turned in trust of the promise.

I have looked deep into the eyes of my sisters, who live in this place of scarcity and hope. The place where having little means there’s room to see God work. I can hardly make them understand my world of abundance and scarcity of hope. The place where having much chokes out the room to see God work.

And yet, as they grab my hands and sing their praise songs, I feel it...the hope those hands push deep into my soul. In the places God has been tilling and turning over, there is fertile ground for what grows here.

I have felt dry and hardened, cracked and barren for some time. Then we walked in Kenya, right before the rains. We saw trees that looked dead—brown and thorny.

They told us that in a few weeks, they would spring to life with leaves as the rains came.
Their choruses of praise are the rains that water what they have pushed deep into the soil of my heart. I don’t understand one word of what they are singing, but I know the One to whom they sing. And I get it...

They wait for rains. They are women of unrelenting hope. They push deep into the soil the promise of provision, life, and resurrection. And I want to be a woman of unrelenting hope. To see the fertile ground God tills around me and push hope deep into the dark places.

Oh, and when the dark places crack wide open and spill forth life, I want to be a woman of unrelenting praise.

I wrote those words while the warm Kenya breezes blew through our open window. The echoes of the women's songs still lingered in my thoughts, and all that crowds my faith was distant and quiet.

Years later, I struggle to find hope amidst all that presses in.
And an echo plays across my memory....

And like a spring rain has fallen....I began to soften.

A woman of unrelenting hope must keep her eyes on the One who is our hope. Just as the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) warned the thorns and the thistles will crowd out the truth of the Word.

Thorns and thistles will crowd out hope.

Thorns and thistles will crowd out glory.

Thorns and thistles will crowd our freedom.

Thorns and thistles will crowd out love.

Thorns and thistles will crowd out the One.

Thorns and thistles are all that crowd our life from the warmth of the Son, the Living Water as it rains down on us and the pruning of the Gardner. Thorns and thistles masquerade as Prime orders, busy schedules, must see tv, to do lists, clutter, practices, crowded closets, another meeting, well-meaning ministries, and all the things of our busy lives.

I'm humming the songs of my Kenyan sisters as I seek to be a woman of unrelenting hope and make room for God to work, to speak, to shine....and I'll be a woman of unrelenting praise while I wait.