I’m not sure how to prevent expectation, really, but I certainly wish I could; because it never goes as we expect.
House church is a great example of this. We spent months attending church with our neighbors, struggling to find passages in the Burmese Bible for barely literate friends to sound out and trying to keep way too many kids quiet.
So thus unfolded house church, as we tried to open our doors to hosting right here in our neighborhood. We are walking through the Storybook Bible, combined with the New Readers’ International Version, and attempting to tell the stories of the Bible and connect it all to Jesus.
We had hopes of it being mostly adults, but welcoming to kids.
Instead, it’s very, very welcoming to kids, and we have some adults that attend. We even have one adult who comes occasionally, but every week comes in afterward to read the Burmese Bible on our floor while his wife packs up the bread orders for the week.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s working or worth the effort, something I ask for nearly everything in our lives. If only a few adults are coming and sitting in the back, how do we reach them? Are the kids getting anything out of this? Do they understand why we do this week after week?
And for that matter, do they understand why we do EVERYTHING THAT WE DO week after week?
We never know. It’s never as we expect.
Enter today, as a few kids spread out on our floor to play. One of them pulls out one of the children’s Bible and asks if this is David or Moses. I explain that it’s actually Joseph, and then she begins to trace his drawing and the entire landscape.
Another child pulls out the Storybook Bible from bible study, and finds the story from last week. He tells the boy next to him about how David was chosen as king, and how he was the smallest of his brothers. He talks about how Kelvin played the oldest brother and Zwe Ne Na played the next…
Yet another child pulls out another children’s Bible. She opens to a picture and page she knows, and then tells the story in Burmese–in her best teacher voice–to the four year old boy looking on. She points to different parts of the illustration and tells the Bible story with confidence.
Her little brother is sitting next to her reading a book about how much God loves him. He loves the page that unfolds to show that God loves you taller than the tallest tree, and the foggy mirror at the end where he can see his face.
A mother was sitting in the corner, looking through yet another children’s Bible.
{You can’t say we haven’t provided opportunities!}
As the rain stops, most of the kids leave. One little girl, Neh Wey, stays behind and pulls up next to me with an illustrated Burmese children’s Bible. At first I am typing away on the computer, and she asks me who this person is. Before long, she goes back to the beginning and we go page by page through the Bible, reviewing the stories. Reviewing them because she knows them. We reach Jericho and she tells me how we just learned about that, and how they walked around the wall, shouted, and it fell down. When I point out Jonathan & David, she remembers that Jonathan is Saul’s son. Saul tries to kill David, but David & Jonathan are friends. When I can’t remember the name of the Queen that Solomon meets with, she insists that we ask Stephen, because he will certainly know.
The stories of the New Testament roll off her tongue: the man couldn’t see and then Jesus touched him and he could! There were just five loaves of bread and two fish and everyone ate and ate and were fat! Jesus walked on the water and then the man got out and walked and then he sank!
We went through all of the Old Testament and nearly all of the New Testament before her mother called her home.
It’s never as we expect. We can count how many people come to house church or quantify the number of stories we’ve told. We can tell you how many hours a week it takes to pull off a translated Bible study with snacks and we can look around the room to see if adults are hearing this.
But it’s likely not in house church where they meet Jesus. They’re not likely to find him in Scripture they can’t read. Instead, it’s likely in the day to day, over dishes and at hospital visits and in conversations in the car.
May they meet Jesus in us, where we least expect it.