As we think through the past week and look forward to the home stretch, we can only give praise to God. He has answered prayer and showered grace on us, from the miraculous weather to the prayerful spirit of the team. This outreach is most certainly his work, and we are encouraged.
Kitty's Road and Atticall are very different settings. Kitty's Road has a long history of exposure to the gospel and to people who have genuine relationships with Jesus. Some of the local team members lead a year-round Bible study and a kid's club, where conversations have been developing for months and some Kitty's Road-ers have been slowly coming closer to faith. There are many strong friendships between folks on the Road and local team members, in the context of which God has been at work in hearts. Many of the kids take a measure of ownership of the message we're bringing. They've grown up with their summertimes including singing to Jesus and hearing about his work. From a cultural standpoint, I've heard many locals say that this sort of relationship between Catholics and Protestants in this country is unbelievable. Dark times of blacklists and car bombs, segregated street corners and deadly vendettas are very fresh in people's memories, and some are very much alive as they are passed down through generations and young people align themselves with one side or the other. But in at least one neighborhood in this town, cultural Catholics and cultural Protestants are friends, some despite their families' vehement disapproval, and the context and content of these friendships is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is massive, massive grace. This is the kingdom of God which Christ died to bring, coming.
The moment-by-moment decisions and the vivid array of startlingly beautiful experiences that make up this trip from our perspective can be bewildering, like mounds of tiny mosaic tiles strewn across the studio floor. This day off, for me personally, has been very, very good as a chance to step back and remember what is really happening as this handful of redeemed ones in one stunning, tucked-away corner of God's earth spend time with other real people for a few weeks, living life and speaking his words. It looks like leading kids in crafts, doing puppet shows, throwing an American football, eating sweet buns and talking about family, singing songs of praise, opening the Bible, saying a few words in teaching and discussion, praying, praying, praying. That is to say, it looks pretty ordinary, looks pretty human.
But the key here is He in whose name we come. Remembering that because of who our God is, because of what our Savior did, death is dying, light is breaking in, our King has won the battle and he's at work establishing his kingdom--remembering this in the daily actions is what it means not to regard anyone according the the flesh. It's what it means to have faith; to look not to the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen.
And let me tell you: this perspective came by no profound perspicacity on my part. My mind has been swimming as much as I have been (which is to say, quite a bit). But this evening as we were coming back from Newry, God knocked us all flat on our little backs with the most enormous, scintillating, iridescent, arching, luminous, distant, present, brilliant rainbow, stretching across Carlingford Lough from the south of Ireland to the north. We hopped out of the minibus, flabbergasted, into the glowing rain, to try to capture the miracle with our cameras.
No photo can communicate the thrill of standing there with this gargantuan half-ring of splintered light singing out its colors to all the world above you, tying earth to sky, with you, tiny but indelible, right there undeservedly in the middle of it, in the luminous grey of rain in the evening sun. As we all stood there in various expressions of awe and delight, running through my mind was the sovereign, mirthful voice of a promise, the LORD saying to this earth of His after the Flood, "I will always be true to you." Oh, how he loves us!
Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together!
Psalm 34:3, ESV
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