“Where do you live?”   This is a question of definition usually preceding a series of other questions, all of which are directed by what is given for an answer.  Someone living in Maine will invariably be asked whether or not he or she enjoys lobster just as often as the individual from Nevada will be asked 'So why isn't Nevada City in Nevada?'

   Were the temperature a few degrees warmer and the air slightly drier, the village of Darshen might easily be mistaken for a frontier town in the American West.  The scattered layout of 30 houses hug the hillside and share both sides of the single-track which carries no more than ten cars a day through the rocky landscape.   Above the village, at the end of a narrow footpath is the village school.  The two story structure is only a year older than I, yet it appears to have stood there for decades without as much as a new handle for the rusting front door. It was on the second floor of this decaying hovel in which I found myself in the middle of twelve or so students studying mathematics, grammar and geography.  It was here that I was asked by the instructor if I would be kind enough to point out my hometown on a map of the world.  As I drew an invisible line across my flight route from America, the eyes around me grew wide.      

   As it happened, there were no questions about the place I had come from that day.   The young minds in that classroom were satisfied with a simple map reference. The days are fast approaching when where we have come from will not matter.  Our position in life will not matter even less.  In spiritual terms, this is already the case. In Christ, there is neither requisites nor requirements.  His invitation is open to all.  In this small village on the outskirts of nowhere, my eyes were opened to how much is left to do.   In the time that has been allotted to us, we must be scattering this great gift upon even the rockiest of soils that it might take root and flourish.   -- Seth