We‘ve been here in Lebanon supporting a local church. It’s been amazing seeing all of the outreach programs just this one church has. Whether it be providing blankets and clothes for winter, music lessons and choir classes to kids, ESL classes, evangelical services, supporting kids so they can go to private schools, providing medical supplies, busing families to and from everything, and holding regular Sunday service, etc. The people here work so hard to support and supply to every need of the locals.
It hasn’t taken long to figure out what the motivator is for these people. Last night on our way to the grocery we talked to a man who recently began following Jesus and he told us his story. Saying that his wife divorced him and left him with his three young children after he told her that he was a follower of Christ. He explained how now he has the mother and father role and that if he ever returned to his home town they would beat him and kill him. Tonight I talked with a 16 year old girl wearing her hijab. On a squeezed packed bus ride back from band class I pulled my face as close to hers as I could to hear her explain how she has been a believer for the last 2 years. She said she could never tell her parents. And then praised God for the war in Syria, where her family had fled from, because without having fled from her country she would never had had the opportunity to learn about Jesus. I said how did you begin believing and she said, when she went to church for the first time she saw how people prayed. How praying was from the heart and how you can experience this love that you can’t get from anywhere else. She said “Its just logical! How can I not believe?”
What I’m being reminded of in Lebanon from so many Syrian refugees is how Jesus is worth it all. The things these people give up is incredible. It’s encouraging and motivating to my own relationship with God. Knowing that so many of these individuals sacrifice family and acceptance of their culture and community. It shows that the relationship with Him is worth losing all relationships here. And with Thanksgiving and Christmas resting on all of our minds, I look up and give thanks first, for my relationship with God and second for the people here who move me closer to Him.
He loves us all so much. And I remind myself and those reading that we are given an invitation into family with our heavenly Father. Whether you have the largest family on Earth or the smallest, you are not exempt from this invitation to be seated at His table.
