Last week at our community meal, we told the neighbors about a new weekly event: we’re going to have a bible story, discussion, & prayer each Thursday evening. Our hope is that it will create space for communication, asking questions, and knowing each other better.
This has come out of multiple things, and in some ways is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. We have been attempting to connect with a local Burmese church each Sunday, but it is more often than not kids coming along with us, and we become the children’s coordinators–or children-quieters. We have had some adults come along, but this involves us trying to help them find the right passages and songs in Burmese. Usually, by the time we find John chapter 4 in five Bibles in another language, the passage has long been read aloud, and everyone else has moved onto the Psalms.
While it felt like it wasn’t ideal–including the fact that we can only fit so many in our little Zuk–we weren’t sure what to do next. But some time in the last year, we felt like God gave us the idea to share the Bible as smaller stories that are part of a larger story. We also felt like it was another opportunity to open up our home, which allows many more to come.
And as our own story here has unfolded, it brought us to this week, and we’ll be hosting the first one.
It feels really scary.
We have put so much of our lives into this community. We have put so much of our hearts into praying for them and opening up our lives to them. And somehow, this feels really risky. I feel vulnerable.
What if no one comes?
What if no one cares?
Per usual, I don’t know.
I just know that we are praying. I know that we have prayed over the words and passages, we have prayed over the translators, we have prayed over the homes and individuals that surround us. We have prayed for our home and this space. We are praying, praying, praying.
And to be honest–I still don’t know what that means. On Saturday at our community meal, we prayed that God would multiply the food so that there would be enough for everyone. I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t really seem like he chose to answer that; or it didn’t feel like it when we drove around from shop to shop finding curries to deliver to houses.
I don’t know why that is. So we just prayed that he would be glorified in us delivering these curries; that somehow these families would feel more loved and see more of God in the way things played out.
And I guess that’s what we’re looking at for tomorrow. We are praying, and we don’t know how God will answer it.
In case you haven’t put the pieces together from this blog: we don’t know what we’re doing. This is beyond us–beyond our comfort zones, beyond our capacity, and beyond our imaginations. But we serve a God that is far beyond this, and he is good. We believe he is working in the families and homes around us; we believe he is in these relationships.
And we believe that whatever it may look like, He will be here tomorrow in our vulnerability and in this community. Please pray with us!