3 personnes

No, this post is not about the Trinity! (A great topic though..)

I'm going to tell you about 3 girls I encountered during mission in Paris, of the many people our team met by the grace & kindness of God.


Une incrédule
At Port-Royal, one of our Bible-stand locations, I met & chatted to what I think is a classic example of a young French unbeliever. In the course of conversation (our prompt-question of the day was, "What's the greatest problem in our world & how do you think it can be solved?", she said she believed it was injustice, which she felt arose out of a human desire for power & control. Flatly she added that she thought this problem was something that humans could not resolve, however much they tried.

So, a definite cynicism about the future of humanity.

I then tried to share with her a bit of the Biblical worldview, highlighting the difference that Jesus makes. Yet whenever I said anything, she watched me with an expression combining pity, mockery and superiority (as if she were thinking, "I can't believe how deluded this religious freak is.."). Her answers to my comments soon indicated her unwillingness to accept the plausibility & reality of Christ, or the hope that God offers in Him.

So, in summary, she admitted to the problem of injustice..
..recognised that humans were incapable of solving this problem, despite any efforts they made..
..yet, in spite of this rather depressing worldview, would rather have believed that humans should just keep trying to be the best people they could be
- anything other than accepting the complete & ultimate solution offered by the gospel of the perfect man Jesus Christ.


Une musulmane
Another girl I met during French mission week was a student from a Muslim family. In fact, we met many such students every day of the week at our Bible-stand locations. This student, residing in France most of her life, had been taken to mosque from a young age, & taught the basics of Islam. Upon entering French high school she was subject to the compulsory 6 years of "philosophy" education, which I rather nastily (& I think accurately) call "atheism dressed up very nicely". When she left school & started uni., she explained to me, she then began to pursue the truth herself - was Islam true? .. or philosophy? .. or some other religion?

In so doing, this student had touched on the Bible, read parts of the Bible. I asked her then, having read what she had of the Bible, her opinion on who she thought Jesus was. Her response:
A good man, a great man (maybe even a prophet), but not God.

Jesus, in her opinion, was not the Son of God, & therefore none of what that entailed - which Scripture (esp. the 4 gospel accounts) very carefully reports - could be true. She would not, therefore, accept Jesus as being either Lord of creation, or its Saviour.

And this was an extremely common refrain many of my fellow mission team members heard from Muslims that we met.

So common of the general Muslim response on the Lord Jesus Christ that, after mission was over, when I heard on the news that some well-known Muslim head honcho (guy who ran Hezbollah, or something?) had died, I actually felt quite sad, because he had died in a faith which blinded him to the Truth, the Way & the Life
- thus giving him no hope in death. And no hope to any others held sway by Islam.

*sigh*


Intéressée
At our Thursday evening activity, I forced myself to sit in on the fluent Francophones Bible-study group..
- it would have been SO much easier to have just gone to the Anglophone group, but in light of my hopes for the next 5 years I felt it better to stick with French -
..thus, it was a bit of a blur, but God in His grace made it all worthwhile after the main study time.

We'd looked at a chunk of REV. 21, & an animated discussion over the text between some of the GBU students (Christians), stagiaires Relais (MTS workers) & several unbelieving visitors had followed. In the more informal social chatting that followed, I was in conversation with one of the visitors, a girl invited along by her GBU student friend. I asked her how she'd found the evening, & what she thought of what she heard.

She was quite laid-back in her response; she had enjoyed the activities & discussion, thought it novel & interesting, & spoke a little of how she had heard things like it during childhood visits to church (with grandparents) at Easter & Christmas.

She then asked me what I thought of all I'd heard.

Thus giving me an unprecedented opportunity to share a bit of my testimony with her
- how I'd been taught about God, Jesus & the Bible at church from infancy,
my decision to accept it,
a little of my journey since then (in the grace of God),
& my sure hope in the new heavens & earth promised by God in the REV. 21 passage.

At which point her friends came by & declared they were heading home, implying that she needed to get her things together.

But by God's gracious permission, I was enabled to share of His work throughout my life..


As you can probably tell, I felt more positive about the last conversation than the first two I mentioned. And yet I know that God can do all things, that no plan of His can be thwarted.

That His love for these 3 unsaved girls is far greater than mine;
for all the world, He gave His only Son (JOHN 3:16).

That He wants them to be saved
& to come to a knowledge of the truth in Jesus
(1 TIM. 2:4-6), far more than I ever will.

That He doesn't want them - or anyone - to perish,
but everyone to come to repentance (2 PET. 3:9).


"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief,
and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved,
and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved,
what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved,
and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!

But according to His promise we are waiting
for new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these,
be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish,
and at peace.
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation,
just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you
according to the wisdom given him.."
2 PETER 3:10-15


Thank you once again, any who have followed me on my 3rd short missionary journey back to Paris. (I will keep you posted on future developments, as God allows me time!)

L/T.


{Post completed:
18/07/2010.}

Un escargot indépendant

I shall commence this tardy post by translating the title from French into English (for non-Francophones).
________________

Un escargot..?
A snail.
The kind of creature that, as a child, you learn about
- one that carries its house on its back.

Indépendant?
This is self-explanatory, in fact - it's just French spelling for "independent".

Thus the title reads as "an independent snail".
________________

The greatest lesson learned on this very short-term missionary journey was, ironically, not actually "mission"-related.
It happened, & indeed is still happening, as a result of my baggage being left by staff in Bangkok (current location still unconfirmed, but it's not in France or the UK).

What I learned is that, like a snail carries its house on its back (or so little children throughout the ages are told), I like to carry all my house/home things around too. Convenient stuff; basic stuff; towels, air-mattress, sheets, toothpaste, hygiene (*cough*) stuff, umbrella & boots for wet-weather, a few non-monochrome changes of clothing. All of these things were in my checked luggage, which never followed me beyond my first stopover/transit point. Consequently, I spent the entire week of mission in Paris without them.


The second part of what I learned is how much I value independence.

I feel VERY uncomfortable borrowing stuff from other people.
I've been raised (in a culture with a distinctively Chinese flavour to it) not to rely on others for things I should be able to provide for myself.
Actually, I just don't like having to borrow things from people; it all feels so inconvenient to them - in my opinion, that is.

So I didn't like having to rely on others for
*an air-mattress to sleep on
*a sheet to cover the mattress
*a towel
*deodorant (it's summer in Paris..)

In short, I didn't like it that I needed to depend on others for provision of the basic comforts (select those you agree are essential from list above).
________________

Some of you reading this are probably thinking, "So what? .. It's not a problem to be able to look after yourself or supply your own needs."

And yet, in my year's worth of thinking about O.S.C.C. mission, I begin to see that for ME personally, yes - it is a problem.

Because if I feel uncomfortable about having to accept the provision of my basic needs from other people
- if I have difficulty being gracious when it comes to depending on others -
how will I cope in the future, if being placed into an O.S.C.C. mission context where being fully supported by others (e.g. friends, bio./Christian family, link churches, missionary sending organisation) is all part of the deal?

*sigh*

Oh well. Better that I learn about weaknesses such as over-self-reliance NOW than later on..

L/T.


P.S. By the way, mission itself was very encouraging.
God graciously answered many prayers for our team.

I hope I was a little encouraging to others, too..but it sure didn't feel like it to me, at time!
At least God IS gracious..