The CNN website recently ran a story about the rise of urban farming. It’s this trend that is starting to emerge in low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods as a way to supply fresh produce to people who ordinarily wouldn’t be able afford such things at the store. One leader in this trend cited a Ghanian proverb that says “sankofa.” He explained sankofa as a word that means “return to your past so you can move forward.”
I like that word – sankofa. For so long, the Christian community has strove to find and develop the next great thing, the next idea, the next trend. When instead, what we should be looking for is sankofa.
The Christian life is relatively simple (in concept): follow Jesus. But most of us try to make it complicated with rules and exceptions to the rules and expectations that we can’t live up to – it’s gets really messy. When instead, Jesus constantly invites us back into fellowship with God. Through Scripture, we hear a call to repent; repent means to turn back or away – to return to something we knew before. In other words, we need to return to the past so that we can move forward…sankofa.
Discipleship is a very old concept; it’s the way in which ideas and knowledge were passed on from generation to generation. Without constantly returning to this old way of doing things, society and culture could not move forward. Often times we turn to the newest book (Blue Like Jazz, Irresistible Revolution, The Shack) or latest preacher (Francis Chan, Rob Bell, Tim Keller) in order to get ourselves out of our slump and feel closer to God once again. When maybe what we ought to be doing is returning to our spiritual roots: the Word of God and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps there’s more to the Teacher’s words when he wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
sankofa…
Filed under: Christian Living, Discipleship
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