04/10/2026
Certainly not the first person to reach out, and certainly not the last. But something about this particular young man’s openness got me thinking.
A few weeks ago, a young man from outside Lusaka reached out and asked if I would mentor him. I have never met him before, though he told me he had followed my work and felt that, in some sense, he knew me.
He is preparing for ministry. As he explained why he wanted me to mentor him, he said things that made me pause. From his perspective, I represented something he hoped to become—a person who had arrived, found fulfilment, achieved something in ministry and life.
But his words forced me to look at myself from a different angle.
Because I know the person behind the public moments. I know the inadequacies, the unanswered questions, the private struggles, the battles fought in silence, and the nights spent processing what could have been and what still needs to become. I know how often I look at others and realise how much further I still have to go and how much I still have to learn.
I have also learned that exposure has a strange way of humbling you.
Had I remained in Mwachinondo village in Katuba, I might have been perfectly content with what my world had taught me to consider enough—a bicycle, two chickens, a pregnant goat, and whatever else constituted success within the boundaries of what I knew. But leaving Mwachinondo for Lusaka introduced me to people whose achievements and possibilities were far beyond what I had imagined existed.
The same thing happens when you travel. You go to another part of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, or North America, and sometimes you return home more humbled than you left. You discover ideas, achievements, systems, disciplines, and possibilities that expand your understanding of what is possible.
Every new horizon seems to say, “There is more. Stay humble.”
And perhaps that is one of the gifts of exposure: it keeps us from becoming too impressed with ourselves.
In one environment, you may feel accomplished. In another, you suddenly realise how much you still have to learn.
That is why I have become increasingly convinced that every horizon has a way of humbling you.
The more I see, the more I realise how small I am. The more I learn, the more I realise how much I do not know. The more I encounter people, the more I recognise my own inadequacies.
And strangely, that does not discourage me. It drives me to my knees.
Because perhaps the goal of life is not to reach a place where we finally feel that we have arrived. There will always be another mountain, another person to admire, another horizon to discover.
What someone else may call “arrival” may simply be another stage of becoming.
And the farther I go, the more I realise that the only safe place is not in what I have achieved, but in complete dependence on God.
Every horizon has a way of humbling you—and teaching you that there is still more to become.
