“What is the greatest lesson your God has taught you?” A man whom I’ll call “W” carefully posed this question to me, enunciating each word, while I enjoyed the picnic he set up for my teammate Kaylaynn and me.
W lives in the apartment building behind the one U Squad stayed in during our time in China last month, and is very interested in improving his English. Kaylaynn and I met him in the outdoor courtyard space in between our apartment buildings. He wandered over to us one afternoon when the whole squad was having “squad time” there – Zach and Hailey were encouraging us from the Word and W noticed. (Though, it’s hard to NOT notice a group of 50 ish non-Chinese young people congregated in the courtyard of apartment buildings in northern China.)
The courtyard of the apartment complexes
“You are learning the Bible? I’d like to know more,” he said to Kaylaynn and I after our squad time concluded. So, we set up a time to meet up. He, his parents, his wife and their 18-month-old son spent an afternoon with Kaylaynn and I a few days after we met, to enjoy a picnic.
During this lovely afternoon with W and his family, we all discussed life and culture and family. Then he posed, “What is the greatest lesson your God has taught you?”
A weighty question. But I was able to give my honest answer without much forethought.
“My God taught me that He loves me no matter what I do. He doesn’t want me to try to be good to earn His love or avoid doing bad to escape from His anger, He always loves and He only wants us to love Him back.”
W replies, “That is a good lesson.”
Indeed, it is. One that I could summarize in a few dozen words to a non-native English speaker. One that children learn in Sunday School to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me.” One that I related numerous times to brilliant college students I encountered during ministry in China at Harbin Institute of Technology, while attempting to explain the appeal of Christianity. Yet, as my wise friend Kelsey said over skype to me, “Sometimes it hits me; how much I love how little I understand the love of God.”
God’s greatest blessing to me for the first month of my Race was being able to explain His greatest lesson to me over and over again; teaching it to myself with every repetition.
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19
What is the greatest lesson your God has taught you?
From my heart,
Erika Venese
