The Journey Back

Small World, Big World

Posted on June 13, 2014

When our kids were smaller, I used to read them the children’s book “Am I Big or Little?” It’s a cute story of a mom trying to explain to her young child that she is big in some ways, but little in others.  As I ponder what to write about today, I thought about that book.

We said goodbye to our friends from Israel tonight after attending a Shabat service with them at Puławska Christian Church.  We hugged and kissed, smiled and waved goodbye.  Haim and I decided we didn’t want to say goodbye, so we would just say “until I see you again”.  I am praying with all of my heart that the words they heard during their time in Poland will take root and those who do not have a relationship with God found Him this week.  It’s hard to think that after spending 10 days together, they are returning to Israel and soon we will be back in America.  We will seem so very far apart in our different cultures and parts of the globe.  It’s a big world.

This evening, I reconnected with a man who was a youth minister in a sister church when I was in high school,  and co-dean of camp with our youth minister when I was a counselor at Camp Allendale.   He also lives next door, I found out, to my next youth minister!  Now he is the director of the International Conference on Missions and is visiting Poland with his wife, sister and her husband.  They will attend the Festival of Hope with us this weekend.  It is so crazy to me that we would cross paths twenty-something years later in Poland.  I’m also going to chat more tomorrow with his brother-in-law, who works for the hospital where we were sent when we were fighting to save our our daughter Grace.  It’s a small world.

Then I think about the event we are in Warsaw to attend this weekend.  The Festival of Hope is a national event expected to bring in tens of thousands of people, who will hear an evangelical message in a country where less than .1% proclaim to be evangelical Christians.  As these masses come to hear the music and preaching of Franklin Graham tomorrow, please pray with me that a seed will be planted, watered or take root in each of them.  It’s a big world….

…. and there are so many opportunities to make disciples.