We have been in Byron Bay, New South Wales Australia for
just shy of a week now, and some week it has been. Byron Bay is a town that looks like it was plucked
directly from the ‘60s. Every
third person has dreadlocks, every fifth car is spray painted or tie-dyed, and
everybody is searching for some kind of spirit
uality or truth. But if I can be honest, Byron Bay is a
very dark place. Our leadership
warned us that there would be places we would visit along this trip that would
be dark at midday, which would feel heavier: like gravity was turned up a
notch. For me, Byron Bay is just such a place. It’s beautiful! The surf is fantastic, the beaches are
pristine, the place is “happy”, and the bay is the eastern most point in Australia
and the place where the sun rises first in the world. Every morning it is Byron that welcomes the new day, and yet
when I walk through town it feels as if there is a heavy cloak laying over the
town smothering us. It is dark
even when the sun is brightest at noonday.
Knowing that, I have a sense that God is going to do crazy
and wonderful things here this month.
So I prayed that wherever God is moving, wherever His love is being
poured out I wanted to be there.
If He uses me, great! If not, I want to be there to witness it and
praise His name. Well, last night
He gave me just that opportunity.
Yesterday we began
a 24-hour prayer and fasting session on a
wharf of rocks at the beach in Byron. About 9 hours into it, a couple of girls
on my squad who had been talking to a drunk women for quite some time asked if
me and another guy would accompany them to walk this lady home. Of course we
would. Along the way we discover
(the guys that is) that the lady’s name is Martha, and when we arrive on the
front porch of a Hertz Rental Car building we discover she is homeless. There is a nice carpet laid out which
Martha tells us is where she sleeps and sadly her pillow is nowhere to be
found: more than likely stolen. We
sat Martha down on “her” carpet, she prayed with us, and as we were about to
leave, she asked if she could sing us a song: a Christian song. “Well of course, Martha. We would love you to.” So Martha, still swaying from the
alcohol in her system, began to sing.
And while she was singing, a feeling came over me that I couldn’t
resist. This is beautiful! Her
voice was raspy and her movements were uncoordinated no doubt due to the
intoxication, but it was beautiful.
I thought, this is what God lives for. This is what Jesus died for. Amen? Here is a woman who just accepted Christ in a drunken
stupor. Who knows if she will
remember tomorrow? Who knows if her life will be forever changed? But in that moment she was praising the
name of the Lord. She was bringing glory to God. I just couldn’t help but think that yes, God enjoys when
stadiums filled to worship Him, but it is moments like Martha singing, that God
gets excited and calls all the angels around saying, “Come, come. Listen my
daughter is singing to me. Oh how beautifully she sings!”
