Siesta Scripture Memory Team: Verse 9!

Calling all Scripture-Memory Siestas: It’s time for Verse 9! Get those spirals out and ready!

We purposely reserved the blog all week for Melissa to share her India trip with us but, needless to say, we have to push pause long enough for our Scripture memory team to sign in with our verses. I’m so anxious to hear Melissa’s report about the Compassion blogger team meeting the children they sponsored that I told her to go ahead and post even on the same day if she has it ready. SO, you may end up with two posts today. Keep an eye out!

I have relived so much of my own time in India through Lis’s vivid descriptions. As I looked at the pictures she posted for us, I had the same thought that occurred to me over and over while I was there: the stark contrast between all the brilliant, rich colors and the darkness of poverty and oppression. They are honestly the most beautiful people you have ever seen in your life. The children are breathtaking but the shocking life they are forced to live is so haunting that a pang goes through your heart every time you picture one in your head.

That’s the real price of a mission trip. You can no longer act like those kinds of conditions don’t exist. So many stories stick out in my mind from the time I spent in India but one in particular recurs in my thoughts almost weekly. I’d been in southern India the first week where there is a large population of Christians and where our women’s groups were comprised of hundreds. I spent the second week in northern India. A completely different story. We went places where you could get arrested if you crossed certain verbal perimeters in public. We served in areas where people who put their faith in Christ signed up instantly for a life of persecution. Stunning. Here’s what I will never forget: one evening I addressed a small group of women in a very modest meeting room. I prepared a Bible lesson that I prayed would reach across our cultural barriers. The twenty-or-so women sat on the floor and listened carefully and respectfully as I shared through an interpreter but I could tell we were not connecting. I mean, why should we? What on earth did I really have to say to them? We had almost nothing in common. I was nearly shamed. I kept delivering the lesson but, in my spirit, I was imploring God for a breakthrough. Then the oddest thing happened to me.

It was like God reached all the way down into the recesses of my memory and emotions and pulled up to the surface the part of me that had experienced abuse and oppression and helplessness. He touched off a whole part of myself I do everything possible to avoid. It was as if all of it had happened the day before. I went straight to my knees and began crawling from woman to woman, laying hands on them and praying things over them only God could have told me to pray. I bawled and they bawled. I wish you could picture the interpreter crawling right behind me. The Holy Spirit fell on us that day and I knew right then one of the reasons God allowed me to have those horrible experiences. How could we even begin to know what others are enduring if no suffering has come to us? We can say the words but nothing is quite like feeling the feelings. No, I still couldn’t enter into their world or their insurmountable challenges and, yes, I’d been free of that oppression for years and they probably never would be this side of Heaven. Still, it was the closest I could come to sharing some small measure of their pain. That evening in northern India was one of the first times it occurred to me that other people could become worth what you’ve been through if Christ could touch them through you. I’ve thought it many times since then. God alone is worthy.

Thanks for letting me share that with you. I’m so proud of you for jumping on board with sponsorships and copious prayers for the Compassion children that I hardly know what to say. Never EVER feel pressured on here about any kind of participation. I mean that concerning everything from Scripture memory to summer Bible study to Siesta Scholarships and to Compassion children. Only do what the Holy Spirit Himself prompts you to do. Otherwise, you’ll miss the ecstatic joy that so often follows obedience. We’re just sharing our ministry lives with you as we live them.

OK, I haven’t forgotten what we’re doing on here today. It’s time for Verse #9! Please, please, PLEASE don’t quit! Our minds are being renewed. Can’t you feel it??
Here’s mine. I just love it! You’re welcome to share it if you’d like:

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. 1 Peter 1:8 NIV

Let’s hear it, Siestas! Name, City, Verse and Translation!

I love you so dearly and I am honored to serve this generation beside you. Keep the faith, Darling Things.