WORSHIP THROUGH IT
Donn and I were sitting in the Sleep Inn motel lobby in Gallup, New Mexico, when a woman checking out caught my eye. Her shirt said, “ORSHIP THROUGH IT.” I puzzled over it for a moment and told Donn, “I think maybe that woman’s shirt says, WORSHIP THROUGH IT.”
When the woman turned to leave, I caught her eye and said, “May I ask what your shirt says?”
She smiled and I got up to join her. “It says WORSHIP THROUGH IT.”
“That’s what I thought it said! We’ve had a couple of rough years and continuing to worship God is one of the things that brought us through!”
“I’m moving back to Nebraska,” my new friend said, “moving from where our older grandchildren live to where our younger grandchildren live.”
So I shared what our son-in-law told me a couple of years ago. “I don’t want to negate the value of going to church, but by far the greatest spiritual influence in my life was my godly grandparents.”
The woman’s face lit up and she said, “That’s why I’m moving. My son doesn’t take my grandchildren to church, and I want to do that.”
I nodded. “Our son passed away, and we take his seven-year-old daughter to church as often as we can. Sarah and I have so many discussions about spiritual things.”
I didn’t ask this godly grandmother’s name, but please pray for her that she would have a spiritual influence on her younger grandchildren as she uproots her life to help bring her grandchildren to Jesus.
MORE GRACE
On Thursday the fourth day of our vacation, a woman came into the breakfast room in our motel wearing a sweatshirt that said, MORE GRACE. Immediately I wondered if she was a Christian and tried to think of any secular meaning those words could have, but found none.
For some reason I had picked up a tea bag when I got my food, although I rarely drink tea, and then later walked back to get some hot water at the beverage counter. The woman in the sweatshirt was standing in front of the hot water, so I stood waiting for her to finish. When she looked up, I said, “I don’t know if those words (I pointed to her sweatshirt) mean to you what they mean to me.”
She said promptly, “They mean to me exactly what they mean to you!”
We stood for at least ten minutes talking about God giving us “more grace” in hard things we’d gone through. Then we walked back to our husbands who just “happened” to be sitting at tables side by side so we could continue our discussion.
At some point, I asked how they had each come to know Christ. Kirsta shared that her mother had been Catholic and her Father Lutheran. She was raised Lutheran but at 19 had an encounter with Christ and was born again.
Then she said to her husband, Brent, “But your experience was different.”
Brent told us that he was an atheist until he was thirty years old when he had a near death experience. He said, “I had a truck that I raced and one day, I got off the edge of the road and wrapped the front end of my truck around a tree. The truck split in half, and the other half wrapped around another tree.” (He showed us pictures of his truck on his phone.)
“When everything was over, I looked at myself and didn’t have a single scratch or blood on me anywhere. I went from being an atheist to a believer in a heartbeat. I knew I should have been dead and I would have been in hell.”
We had been talking about mercy and grace, so I said, “And you had done nothing to deserve God’s mercy.”
“No, I’d never done anything except talk bad about him,” Brent agreed. “But I’m the kind of person that if I’m in, I’m all in! So after that experience, I was all in for Jesus!”
“And God knew that about you!” I smiled. “He knew if only He could get you to believe, you’d be all in!”
At some point, I started telling Brent and Kirsta about the woman on our plane who wanted to buy us drinks (see New Mexico Saga, Part I) which led to me telling her about being raised Mennonite. When I finished, Brent said, “I have a Mennonite story for you.”
He went on to tell us about going to help his grandfather whose property had gone through a hurricane. It was so bad that after four days, he didn’t know how they’d ever get it cleaned up.
“Then we looked up,” Brent said, “and coming down the road were twelve Mennonite men who had come on a disaster relief team to help people clean up after the hurricane. They all pitched in and worked until my grandfather’s property was cleaned up!”
Soon after this, a woman seated near us came to our table. She wanted to tell us that she lives in Illinois and knows many Mennonites. When I asked where she was from originally (she appeared to be some other nationality), she said was born in America but her parents were from India. “I am from a sect of Hinduism that teaches about Jesus and Buddha and many ways to peace.”
The woman talked with the four of us for awhile, and then Brent came to our table to say good bye. I said, as I often do now, “If we don’t see you again here, we’ll see you in heaven.”
Brent smiled. “Yes, we’ll see you in heaven!” Kirsta gave S and I each a card with her contact information so we could stay in touch.
After Brent and Kirsta both left, I helped S clear her table and gave her my name and website address. As I listened to what she was saying, I realized that she is offended by people who, in the name of Christ, try to make her into a carbon copy of them. I talked about our mission society, OMS International, making it clear that we are not trying to make people like us, but we want them to be like Jesus.
S said, “Yes, we don’t care how they find peace, as long as they find peace.”
I couldn’t agree with that so, speaking carefully, I said, “I can’t say I don’t care how people find peace because our Bible says Jesus is the Prince of Peace; so since His peace is the best, we want people to find peace in Him.”
The woman seemed especially moved that I had helped her clean her table. We hugged several times before saying good bye. Please pray for S that she will find peace in Jesus.
Father, we are so grateful for the encounters you plan for us, both with believers and unbelievers, and connections we make for this world and the next. Amen.
