Several years ago, it seems like another lifetime, but only four....we had the privilege of going to a foreign country to teach English to high school students...they really just wanted to talk to us to,work on their speaking...but we had a curriculum with lessons for each day, idioms, stories, pronunciations, spelling..it was an absolutely wonderful experience...the students were so respectful, so enthusiastic, warm and welcoming...
We arrived in this large town of about 200,000....a huge Buddha on one side and a huge mosque on the other...
Our liaison was a soft spoken man who wanted these students to learn
English, to meet Americans, to share cultures....He welcomed us to his culture as well..he even took us to meet his 80 year old mother....with her beautiful flower garden...
The whole experience was unforgettable, and each day brought a new blessing to us...but one piece of time was listening to his life story...his English was very good, heavy on the accent but, it was like he speaking totally clearly to my husband and I. He told of the cultural revolution that their country under went years ago when he was a teen. He was one of the "privileged" (meaning educated) but was sent to live on a farm to live and work...he said he knew he needed to learn English...even though that was forbidden..he kept scraps of paper with English words, hidden in the mud walls of his dwelling, to practice...finally, he was released from this farm work to become a teacher, and rose from there...all the while learning English...knowing that someday he would be able to use it without being punished...that is why he so encouraged these students to learn all they could...they had been taught since elementary school how to speak/write it, but by teachers who had never been outside their country and learned from recordings...
One day, he took us on a walking tour of various sites around the town, museums, squares, his place of worship, ....he shared himself with us...as we were walking away from one, he said if he were ever allowed to visit America, he would want to visit similar places as well as our churches..with any of us...that was his expectation...church/religion was part and parcel of our culture..
But, comparing the two cultures, each has walked away from our roots of our "religion" being a basis of who we are...we have embraced humanitarianism , materialism, and various other "isms" instead of what our founding fathers came for....for us, the Bible is less read, a relationship with Christ is less sought out, "sins" have been renamed, pleasure is the goal, .....and on and on....
It makes me ask, where do I stand today? Would I be proud and excited to show a foreigner my church? How about my next door neighbors? is my belief/relationship with Christ part and parcel of who I am? And who knows that?....is it even evident?
Thank YOU, for allowing us to have a window of time to see other parts of the world...their lives, their smiles, their similarities and souls, just like us....their need for a Saviour...
Isaiah 39:2 Hezekiah received the envoys gladly and showed them what was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine olive oil—his entire armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.
Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
Ephesians 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
Ephesians 2:7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 3:8 Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ,
Colossians 2:9-10New International Version (NIV)
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
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