Does God have a specific person that He wants us to talk to
today? That was the question that Pastor Jim challenged us with this morning
before we traveled to downtown Philly. He
led us in a time of listening to God to see if there was a specific word, image,
or name that would lead us to a specific person. God did indeed give us what seemed like
random words, images and names. We typed
up the list, made 40 lunches, and headed to downtown Philly to spread God’s
love to the homeless and see what God had in store!
We broke into groups of two, overcame our fears, and asked
homeless people if we can share our lunch with them. Many of them agreed and even let us pray for
them! We learned their stories and showed that we cared. Some people blessed us as much as we blessed
them. We were all incredibly moved by being able to be the hands and feet of
Jesus.
Meanwhile, we were on a “treasure hunt” for people that
matched the words, images, and names that God gave us earlier. One homeless man matched one name that we had written down. Another was wearing a heart symbol that matched one that we had drawn. Another person was wearing a batman symbol that we had seen.
Yet a lot of the items on the list went unmatched. This led one group to go around to random
people in the Reading Terminal Market asking strangers if they had the names
that matched the names on our sheet.
That didn’t yield any results but it sure was fun! More on the treasure hunt later…
It is so apparent that Pastor Jim and Luis are completely
engaged in serving and blessing Philadelphia.
They can hardly talk about anything else! They deeply want to help the
neighborhoods know Jesus, love Him, and love each other. They work hard at it. So we sent Jim, Luis, and their spouses out on a date while we watched their kids! After the kids went to bed, we watched the
documentary http://www.letthefireburn.com/ and Pastor Jim came home and challenged us to think about what we can do in the Harrisburg area to foster racial
reconciliation. It was a tough question
that we wrestled with.
No comments:
Post a Comment