Last week church was involved in doing a home makeover for a young family who were having a really hard time. They were moving from private rented housing to council housing just before Christmas and the whole place needed to be redecorated as the previous tenant must have smoked about 100 a day. There had been a set of very difficult circumstances leading up to that point and the family was exhausted and overwhelmed. Our church stepped in to offer some help to the other organisations involved. We picked up our paintbrushes and set to.I was in the house on Tuesday and the young mother ( let's call her Maya) was there wanting to do what she could to help out. Other people were supposed to be there too but they didnt show up so it was just the two of us - which of course gave us chance to chat. Maya and her husband are from Greece *. They have been in Northern Ireland for a few years and she has been working as a nurse.
The first thing that happened was that she asked me what I did for a living and I told her that I worked for Jo Jingles. She immediately started telling me that she had been looking into taking her toddler along to classes but wasn't sure how it worked. So I was able to tell her, encourage her to go, and later speak to my boss to let her know to look out for her. So that was a nice 'coincidence.'
Then at the end of the week when we had done a really good job on the house we invited Maya to our carol service. Not because we wanted to recruit her, or emotionally blackmail her or exploit her sense of indebtedness to us in any way..... but just because it was going to be a nice evening and we thought she might enjoy it. And she came.
The building was packed. There were probably about three hundred people there and there was barely a seat to be had. Josh had come with me - Keith was at work and the other two boys had stayed at home. We nearly always sit on the end of a row but we decided to shuffle into the middle to let others who arrived a bit later get a seat. As the service was about to start I looked up and there was Maya. There was one seat next to me and she came over and sat with me. She had her toddler with her. Cute as a button and absolutely loved the Christmas carols. She was clapping her hands and dancing and having a great time and Maya seemed to be really enjoying herself, singing heartily and playing with her daughter throughout. Halfway through the sermon the toddler got a bit loud and fractious so Maya took her out to the creche.At the end of the service I was talking to Josh and when I looked round Maya was deep in conversation with the lady who had been sitting on the other side of her. It turns out that that lady was a member of our congregation who is a fluent Greek speaker!! Not only that but she is an interpreter - and Maya has recently been thinking that it is time to get out of nursing and possibly go into translating work. So the two of them exchanged phone numbers and arranged to meet up to talk about a possible career change.
What are the chances of a complete stranger walking into a room of three hundred people and sitting next to the only other person in the room who speaks their language?? One in three hundred I guess 😃 Maya was blown away - she was quite prepared to believe that God had arranged all of that. And I was blown away by the care that He takes with people. He knows the smallest details of our lives - from the music classes we want to attend with our kids to the career changes we might be contemplating. He knows when we need practical help to paint our skirting boards and when we just need to hear someone speaking our mother tongue when we are strangers in a foreign land.
Dont you just love Him?
I've been reading a whole bunch of books in recent weeks for a course Im doing in church. But one evening watching God at work tells me so much more about Him than any number of pages of doctrine and theology and testimony and teaching. Wonderful though all that is. Keep your eyes open. He is doing this stuff all the time everywhere. Its exciting to be in on some of His secrets some of the time 😊
(Oh, and for anyone who is interested about 800 Jesus stones went out into the big wide world on Sunday. Im praying that each one of them will have a story to tell somewhere down the line )
(* I changed their country of origin and jobs in order to further protect their identities )
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