Chinese Missionary

I am nobody special. I was raised in a Presbyterian church family and when I went to college … I rebelled. I became anti God and mocked believers on campus and embraced the ways of the world. At the age of 26, I simply had the feeling I needed to find a church to take my children to. A friend shared the gospel with me and Jesus opened my eyes that day to His saving grace. I found a good Bible teaching church and began to grow in knowledge of Him and not just about Him.

I knew that Jesus gave me the gifts of teaching and evangelism. I boldly shared the gospel freely and frequently with any one He brought in my path. I taught Sunday school for children. I had Good News Clubs in my home. I lead Bible studies and VBS. Over a 2 year period, our family was a foster home for 27 new born babies from a private adoption agency.

I felt we had a blessed life until my husband left and I was suddenly a single mom to my son. The only reason I include this is for encouragement to others. This was a dark time and I could see no joy or good that could come from this.

About 10 years later, God called me to China. What an audacious and  ridiculous idea that my God would choose me! By this time I was a 55 yr old, divorced grandmother. I was raising three of my granddaughters . I had never been out of the country. I did not have a passport and had never thought about myself in the context of overseas missions.

My decision to go was based completely on my faith in my God to use me, one of the foolish things of this world, and to equip me to be useful to Him. That step took me to the other side of the world for the most blessed and exciting decade of my adult life.

Day Twenty Six – Good Food

Today I am thankful for good food. It’s Thanksgiving Day and people all around the country are sitting down with family and friends to eat turkey and ham and dressing and green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. Although I am not with my family today, I am with good friends who welcome me like family and we are eating very good food.

Poverty

I feel so useless sometimes in the face of big things like homeless and hunger. I pray often for God to use me and give me the opportunity to show His love. I want my life to show clearly that I love Jesus. I often get to in my daily life with the youth girls I get teach or the moms I get to work with, changing the world one encouraging word at a time. But for the big picture things, like poverty, I feel so small, so useless.

One of the ways I try to make a difference is giving  to people on the street when I feel led to. Sometimes I give blankets, jackets, food, or even money at times. I try to give what I feel led to give them at that moment. I’ll be praying as I drive in the car, minding my own business, asking God about things that matter in my life and the things I want, then I’ll see someone holding a cardboard sign. In that moment, I’ll know that God is asking me to give. Not to just give to the homeless in general (food drives are important and serve a great purpose!) but to care for that particular person at this particular time. There have even been times that I’ve heard God say “Give to the person at the next corner” and sure enough there has been someone at the next corner even if that corner is normally vacant. It’s rarely convenient to give. In fact, it usually makes me late to wherever I was going. But it’s always worth it.

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I was driving home from church one evening and my “low fuel” light flickered on. The sun had gone down and I could probably make it home and get gas in the morning instead. But then I remembered I had to leave the house earlier than normal the next day and I would likely be late if I had to add something else into my morning. So I pulled into the next well lit gas station I saw.

I got out and began to pump gas into the car. As I was leaning against my car wait, I noticed a guy sitting on a bucket by the building. He was leaning over and wasn’t moving at all, maybe he was sleeping, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t looking at that moment to share the love of God with someone, I just wanted to get home quickly. We had recently talked in MOPs about safety and being alone at a gas station at night was on the list of things to NOT do. But there I was, at a gas station, at night, alone. Fear began to well up inside me. There was nobody else around, no other cars, just the attendant inside behind a locked door paying no attention to what was happening in his parking lot. I thought “this guy could come after me and I have no defense and no one would see.” Fear starter to really grip me and it became difficult to breath. So I prayed. “God you put me in this situation and You’re going to take care of me. You can take care of whatever is about to come my way.” I heard almost audibly “Feed my sheep.” I thought “Oh, how silly. I must have heard that verse sometime today and it got stuck in my head.” You know, like a song gets stuck in my head. And I heard it again, “Feed my sheep.” I thought “Oh, no. He looks scary. He looks dangerous. It’s dark, I can’t do that, I’m by myself.” I tried to dismiss the thought but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Just then, my phone dinged. My husband sent me a text asking me to pick up a burger for him from Karl’s Jr. Sigh.

I left the gas station after I finished filling up my car and drove across the street to Karl’s. I ordered a burger for me and a burger for my husband and then added an extra burger in there for the guy at the gas station. I paid for the 3 meals and drove back across the street to the lonely, scary gas station. I pulled up my car as close as I could to him without hitting him and rolled down my window to hand him the burger. I spoke but he didn’t move. I spoke up again and held out the burger. When he still didn’t respond I began to think “Oh goodness, is this guy even alive? Am I going to have to report this guys death to the authorities?” I started to get out the car and then fear gripped me again as I thought “What if he’s sitting still waiting for me to get out and then attack? Waiting for me to be more vulnerable.” I heard it again “Feed me sheep.” Okay, God. I can be bold in a terrifying situation. I rolled my window down further, closed my door, and spoke up louder one more time. This time he looked up. I said “I have a burger here for you if you would like it.” He looked at me with these eyes that just… he was like a child. It was like he didn’t know what to say. It seemed to be such a big thing. It was just a little burger but he said “Thank you, thank you.” with tears in his eyes. I told him “Jesus loves you. Do you know that?” He looked down for a second and said “No, I don’t know that.” in this real quiet voice that made me wonder if he had known it at one point.  “He loves you passionately,” I said.  He thanked me again for the burger and looked down again.

As I drove away, I feel so tiny. So small. So insignificant in the face of this man’s struggles. I am so abundantly blessed. I have a home and a family and food on the table and the means to get Karl’s whenever I feel like it and there’s just so much that I don’t struggle with but there are people out there that do. I don’t know what to do about it. I just want to feed everyone. I don’t know where to go from here. I know I can’t feed the world. But I know that Jesus associates feeding His sheep with loving Him and if the biggest way I can do that is feeding one person at a time, then I will continue.

Red Beans and Rice

I stuck my key into the door and turned the knob. I had been waiting all day for this. The door swung open and I took a big, deep sniff. My house smelled better than I had even hoped. 8 hours earlier I made red beans and rice in the crock pot. Then I turned it on and Amelia and I left for the day. Every time I was tempted to stop at a fast food joint on the way home, I reminded myself that red beans and rice waited for me at home, already cooked. I hung up my jacket and purse, changed Amelia’s diaper and clothes, set the table, popped the cornbread into the over, and waited for Jason to get home so we could eat.

I almost couldn’t wait for him to get there but he was only a few minutes away so I held off until he was sitting across from me at the table. I loaded up our bowls with red beans and rice with a side of piping hot cornbread. We prayed and then I picked up my spoon to dig in. I heaped my spoon high and opened my mouth wide. Finally, I tasted my red beans and rice that I had been waiting for all day!

and.it.tasted.gross.

What a huge let down! It seriously tasted terrible. I’ve made red beans and rice before. I know I can make it successfully. How can it taste so very bad when it smelled so very good? Were my pregnant taste buds messing with me? I glanced over at Amelia. She was shoveling it in like there was no tomorrow. Maybe I was crazy. I looked up at Jason. Nope. I’m not crazy. He hated it too.

“What did you do to it?” he asked incredulously.
“I… I don’t know,” I replied, searching my head for where I could have possibly gone wrong.
“Well, you did something wrong. Maybe you forgot an ingredient?”

I retrieved my recipe card from the kitchen and began to look over it. What could I have done? I put everything in. Then I read the very last ingredient. “Salt to taste.” I forgot the salt. No wonder it tasted terrible! Even the best recipes fall flat without salt! It can make or break a dish.

Matthew 5:13-16

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Christians are called to be the salt of the earth. We can make or break our culture. We can have all of the right things and all the right ingredients but we don’t have the love of Jesus, we just fall flat.

Salt preserves food from rotting. Christians preserve the world from evil.

Salt flavors food. Christians flavor the world with love.

Salt balances the water content in our bodies. Christians balance hope to the world.

Salt is valuable and was once used as currency due to it’s rarity (yes, I know it’s readily available today in our first world society but not then and not everywhere today). Christians are valuable and rare in a world darkened by sin and despair.
What are you doing to salt the world around you?

The Woman

Today’s post is a story I jotted down a while back. My husband and I had just purchased a house when this happened. We had one week between the time we closed on the house and the time our lease ended at our apartment, which was about 4 miles away. So we moved a few things in on the day we closed, which was a Thursday, and waited until Saturday before moving the bulk of our things and spent the next several days thoroughly cleaning the apartment. This incident happened on Friday morning during the weird in-between time when we lived in two places at once.

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I went to the apartment this morning to get something to make for breakfast. Then I planned to buy some coffee for my husband because the coffee pot was not set up at the new house yet. I was debating between Shipley’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Starbucks. They’re all on the same road with just a block or so in between them. I started to pull into Shipley’s but changed my mind to Dunkin’ Donuts because I really like their hot chocolate.  Had I decided to go to Shipley’s instead of Dunkin Donuts, I wouldn’t be telling you this story. As I drove past Shipley’s and up to the first red light, I saw a woman walking down the street. I assumed she was heading toward the bus stop there at the corner, but it turned out she was actually heading towards the trash can at the bus stop. She was an older woman, probably at least 60. She was dressed head to toe in at least 5 or 6 layers of clothes and I imagine she may have been carrying all of her clothes with her, but I’m not real sure. The sight of her broke my heart. Where was her family? What happened that she was alone digging through trash cans?

She reached into the trash can and pulled out a What-a-Burger cup. She shook it and realized there was drink left in it, so she gulped it down. She looked in the trash can again, but I guess there was nothing else in there to eat or drink, so she kept walking. I looked in the seat next me and saw the large pile of food I had gathered from the apartment and I thought about my decision to purchase some coffee and hot chocolate this morning, and immediately I felt humbled.

I pulled into the parking lot she was walking in, and I got out of my car. “I have food in my car,” I said. “Would you like some?” She kind of cast her eyes down but nodded yes and walked to my car. I opened up my car door and told her to choose what she wanted. She took a box of cereal and some quinoa milk, a bunch of bananas, and several other items. “God bless you,” I said. She nodded quickly, kind of snorted, said “ya ya” and went on her way. I got back into the car and went to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a cup of coffee, a cup of hot chocolate and a couple of eclairs, the whole time wishing there was something more I could have done. How small I am in the face of things like poverty and hunger!

I can’t help but feel abundantly blessed with this great house we have and the ability to buy coffee when I want, and I wish there was more I could have done. God used me to provide a breakfast for her, but He used her to show me how overflowing my life is.