My husband parked the mini-van
and we unloaded the kids, bundling them up and being careful to avoid the
puddles that had accumulated over-night. This was our first visit to the Audubon
Society and today offered many extra events because it was a fundraiser. Our first stop made the top of the list for
the kids: petting an owl and standing next to a falcon.
Because the Audubon Society is
on the Trail of Tears, many of the vendors were Native Americans. I walked through a couple pottery booths while
my husband took the kids to the restroom.
A tent-covered booth labeled, “Iroquois
jewelry and Wampum,” (or something to that effect) caught my eye because we’ll soon be studying
Native American history in our homeschool curriculum.
The woman behind the counter
greeted me and soon we were making small talk.
She immigrated from Germany and married a Cherokee man. I told her that I would be leaving America in
the coming months (God-willing) for Thailand and her eyes widened, “Thailand,
why?!” “We’ll be telling people about
Jesus Christ, that because of our sin we need Him as Savior.” Those weren’t the words I typically used to
explain our move, but the Lord must have prompted me to say it that way. She didn’t have much more to say, but moments
later directed my attention to a man
standing at the entrance to the booth. “You want to talk about sin, you should
talk to him.” I think it caught us both
off-guard because with confusion we both asked, “What?”
“You have a question about
sin,” she directed him. The Native
American man (her husband) said, “Oh sin, yes.
What sin will send me to hell?”
Honestly, I couldn’t believe God opened this door! I was excited, yet focused on answering the
question, “Any sin.” He clarified, “But
what sin? Give me an example.” I rattled off a few, from lying to
cheating. He didn’t believe in sin, and
said he had none. When I pressed him on
the issue, he said that it wasn’t sin, just human nature. He casually said that he was God. I said very calmly, “You can’t be. You have sin, and you can’t take mine
away. You are no different than me.”
My husband showed up at about
this time and patiently stayed close by with the kids, while I shared the
gospel with this man. He grew up in church
but said he had no example to follow, just an old man- a drunk that sat under a
tree. “Do you know what I mean?” he asked.
“I had not one person to look to as an example.” “Oh, yes I do. You saw people who say they are Christians
but are really just hypocrites.” I don’t
think he expected that answer, but he revisited that excuse more than once, “I
have no one to follow, no example.”
I prayed in my head, asking
God to give me scripture and words to speak.
He did. “You have an example,
just like I do: Jesus. People will
always fail, because they have sin. If
you watch my life, I will sin and disappoint you. The conversation continued like a country road,
winding away, and then coming back. I
told him we all have sin, and need someone without sin as our example and that
is why we have Christ! He was without
excuse.
If you have any background
knowledge you know that Native Americans are very “atuned’ to nature. I asked who his creator was. His only response was “the grandfather.” He had no explanation for how life began, or
an afterlife. I spoke, “Look at creation;
it testifies that there must be a God who created it. Yet, all of this beauty will be
destroyed. My God is so loving that He
warned us, through the Bible. Isn’t that
what a loving God would do? Tell you?” I shared how provided a solution to sin through
Christ.
He listened and guided me to a
wall of t-shirts for sale with statements of his faith across the back of them.
There were four and he led me to the first, asking me to read it. We discussed the philosophy behind this shirt
and the next. I agreed that we should use
only from nature what we need, but most of the other “spiritual” content was
faulted. T-shirt number three brought
blunt truth from my lips. To sum up the
quote on this shirt: we are born innocent, people hurt us and we are not
responsible for the kind of people it made us.
I finished reading it, “Well, that is a lie. No one is born innocent, I have kids, I know.” He proceeded to tell me that my children’s
short-comings were a result of my thoughts and actions when I carried them in
pregnancy. I honestly took no offense to
this and simply said, “My children were born of Adam, they are sinners. They need a new-birth in Christ, one to take
away their sin.”
“I want to know something,” he
asked, “What will you think about me when you walk away from here?” I looked into his face and spoke from the
heart with tears forming in my eyes, “I want to cry, because I want you to know
my God.” I grabbed his arm and tugged
his sleeve, “I want to pull you to Him and for you follow Him, but you won’t.”
He smiled and laughed, “I just
want you to accept me as I am.” I said, “If
I loved you, I wouldn’t. If I saw a
friend walking down the wrong road, I would tell them, because I loved them. He
smiled and laughed hard, not in a demeaning way, I honestly think I amused him.
I continued, “If I had no love for you, I would have walked away. I wouldn’t continue talking to you, would I?” “No, you wouldn’t,” he agreed.
I finished discussing the
forth shirt with him and our conversation came to an end. I asked for his business card and as his wife
handed it to me, he ended, “I think we will be good friends. My door is always open to people who want
hear the things I teach.” Oh, if only the
door to his heart was open to hear words of Truth! I said, “I will be praying that you will read
your Bible and follow Christ.”
Today was planned out, we did
everything on our list, yet that one encounter changed my entire day. I realize how the Lord has used the past two
weeks to prepare me for this conversation and I certainly didn’t see it coming. I was using the content from the Sunday
sermons to teach to our kids during lunch and was encouraged our son’s response
to it, but God also used 10 days of lunch conversations and Bible study to
equip me!
Reflecting on the day, I could be discouraged
that the man didn’t profess any desire to seek Christ, but I know that is the work of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t until we drove home and I shared
the conversation with Ken, that I realized something. The wife
of the Native American man heard the whole conversation…and she was the one who
initiated it! Perhaps the Lord was
speaking to her…I don’t know…
I have a confession: this morning
we woke early to pass out Easter service invitations to a subdivision near our
church. The last time we went door to
door like this we asked people about their beliefs and shared the gospel with
them. It was hard, out of my comfort
zone, and involved weeks of intentional preparation by studying Scripture and
being prepared to give an answer. I said
to myself this morning, “I am so glad I don’t have to do that today, I feel so
unprepared.” I’m thankful, that in spite
of my sinful attitude, neglecting the call to always be ready to give an answer,
God still used me.
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