Oasis International

The Path is Made By Walking: Summiting the Africa Study Bible Project

By Hannah Rasmussen, ASB Editorial Assistant | Nairobi, Kenya

In January 1995, my family flew into Tanzania. Exactly twenty years later, I saw Tanzania from a bird’s eye view again—standing at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

This time, I earned the view. I walked.

I walked through a rainforest thunderstorm, over bridges lined with Seuss-like cacti, through a cloud in the artic desert. I walked in wet clothes, with aching muscles, warding off the equator’s sun with a hot pink sunhat. I clambered over rocks in the freezing moonlight.

“The path is made by walking.” In the hours of hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro, I told myself to focus on the moment, not the distance ahead.

My hike gave me perspective on the Africa Study Bible project. As far as we know, no one has ever created a study Bible with 250 different contributors, and certainly not with writers from over fifty countries speaking different languages. If you stare at the mountain ahead, it can seem insurmountable.

I doubted that I would make it to the top of Kilimanjaro. I’ve never climbed more than a hill—could I really climb the tallest freestanding mountain in the world? To my surprise, my upbringing prepared me. Living in Nairobi the past few months helped me deal with the altitude. My college years in “Minne-snow-ta” helped me differentiate between slippery and soft snow along the crater’s edge. 

The day my friends and I summited Mount Kilimanjaro, we walked a full day through clouds to the last hut. After two hours of sleep, we began the steepest part of the hike. My teammate in front of me wore a headlamp, but I walked by the light of the nearly full moon. I recalled the Swahili version of “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less.” One verse in that translation says, “If my path is long, he gives me salvation. If the clouds hit me, his strength is my light.”

The complexity and scope of the Africa Study Bible project have produced challenges and delays. But although the Africa Study Bible work seems like unknown traversed terrain, I recall what God says in Isaiah 42:16: “I will lead blind Israel down a new path, guiding them along an unfamiliar way. I will brighten the darkness before them and smooth out the road ahead of them. Yes, I will indeed do these things; I will not forsake them.”

The summit of the Africa Study Bible project is still months away, but as we grow closer, the trail is also growing steeper. I believe God is at work in the Africa Study Bible project. If we could accomplish it easily on our own, where would his glory be? But as we trust God with every step in the process, we blaze a new trail.

At the highest peak in Africa, I saw the sun rise in splendor, brighten tiny farms and towns out to the horizon, blind in brilliance off of pale blue glaciers and a snow covered crater.

With the Africa Study Bible, we are going to see Africa at its height. We will see the landscape from the heavens’ perspective. We will see that what God creates is magnificent.

So all of us—the hundreds of writers, partners, designers, and editors scattered across the continents and across languages—continue to make our path by walking, one step at a time.

Hannah Rasmussen is our on-site Africa Study Bible Editorial Assistant. She is based in Nairobi with our African editorial team.

Want to support the work of people like Hannah on developing the first study Bible written by Africans, for Africans? Give online here.

Read more about the project at www.africastudybible.com.

Developing the Africa Study Bible: Spring Progress Report

Gathering together qualified African writers for the Africa Study Bible can be a challenge. In order to be truly representative, our writing team must have specific percentages from English, French, Arabic, and Portuguese speaking Africa, be equally distributed geographically, and have balanced representation from men and women.

Oasis International has been blessed with the estimable Janice Muchai to work as the Writing Coordinator for the Africa Study Bible project. A Kenyan, Janice has been involved in leadership development in Africa for over 12 years, and her work in coordinating the writing for this project has been phenomenal!

Here is Janice's full Spring report on the progress of the writing for the Africa Study Bible. To make sure that you receive notification of these reports, sign up for our Africa Study Bible mailing list at the bottom of this webpage. 

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JANICE: Every one of our weekly editorial staff meetings in February closed with a sense of “more” is needed. The project needed more writers, especially from North and South Africa. I had to find more women writers. More French speakers were needed! We needed funds to meet our monthly obligations. On the editorial front, with many writers sending in pieces at the same time, we began to experience a backlog of content in need of review.

Then came March. Through help from our tireless “friends of ASB,” I received contacts of North African writers [a difficult region to find writers for], and we were able to sign on a writer for one of the key Articles. That contact also produced two others, one from South Africa and one Ethiopia. They in turn have gone on to produce others… But it is not just writers who made the Spring outstanding. It was also the highly respected theologians who spared the time to write letters of commendation when we requested. It was the professors who volunteered the names of their students, and pastors who gave us their personal feedback and further contacts.

Spring also brought much excitement and relief in other areas. Much of the editorial work has been brought to date. I continued to receive responses from the more than 200 emails I sent out and in March alone we either began discussions to contract, or concluded the contracts with more than ten new people.

I solicit your prayers and assistance as my colleagues and I trust God to bring us more people who would commit to write. We pray that those who have been contracted send in their items on time and that the writers would adhere to given writing guidelines. Thank you for your continued support and prayer.

- Janice Muchai, Writing Coordinator for the Africa Study Bible Project

As part of our effort to keep you up to date on the progress of the Africa Study Bible, we will be bringing you regular progress reports on its development and production in the coming 18 months. 100+ African pastors and theologians are currently contributing to these study notes, and we are hoping to receive all of the written content for the Bible this summer!

Have a question about how you can be involved with the development of the Africa Study Bible? Email us at [email protected]. If you are interested in giving the the project, you may donate here.