When I was seventeen, I went to New York on a mission trip. We would wake up at 4 in the morning to get on a subway down to a little Chinese church in Brooklyn where we would put on a VBS all morning. Then in the afternoon we would go to a soup kitchen to serve. We would get back around 10 pm, debrief, sleep and wake up again at 4am.
One afternoon after VBS, they did something different with us. They put us in groups of 6 and handed us a map with a star on it and told us to end there. We were also given a list of things to do once we got there, which included buying a meal for someone, finding a soup kitchen, and talking to the people in the neighborhood to get a feel for how it has changed.
At this point, I was thoroughly pumped because I loved doing spontaneous things like this. I was praying as we were going there, “Lord, show us who you want us to talk to and give us guidance and help us serve where you need us to serve.”
We made it to our star on the map and started to seek out someone we felt like the Lord was telling us to buy a meal for. After looking around for someone to buy a meal for, we finally found a homeless man sitting down. We approached him with a sandwich in hand, hoping that he would talk with us. I was so excited to share this meal with him, when suddenly he gave a reaction that I wasn't expecting: that he didn't want our food, he wanted our money.
I was devastated because I assumed that sharing a meal with this man was going to be beautiful and inspiring, yet it turned out to be the farthest thing from it. Rejection and disappointment flooded my heart, all we were trying to do was be the hands and feet of Christ Jesus. Defeated, we found our way towards the subway to make our journey home. My prayers at this point shifted to, “Why Lord, didn’t you use that opportunity?”
On our way home I noticed a soup kitchen, and in attempt to do something meangingful, we went inside and began talking and they were kind but nothing life-changing. They then mentioned someone painting a mural I the back and we should go meet him, so we did. He began telling us his story how he travels around staying in hostels and painting murals for churches. He was so passionate about the Lord, he found so much joy in a simple life of serving the Lord through the gifts God had given him. He began to encourage us in things he didn’t even know we were struggling with and I was overwhelmed with the Lords presence.
At that exact point that I had given up on the Lord he blessed me, he reminded me that he is faithful. He is faithful even when we are not faithful. That he is unchanging even within our doubts.
