Today God reminded me that ministry is 24/7… Regardless of which country your in. Ministry happens from the moment you wake up in the morning, till that moment sleep over takes you in the evening. It happens during designated “ministry” times, such as holding a child during a feeding at a care point in Swaziland. Ministry happens as you walk through the church door of a church in Caprtown South Africa, after having just come off a 30 hour travel day.
Ministry happens as your sharing life with a squad-mate who, over the course of the last year, has become a sister to you. Ministry happens as you reflect on the past 10 months and the journey that lies ahead as your trying to figure out how to part ways at the end of the month.
Ministry happens as your sitting in a random bus station in Capetown, waiting for your months contact to pick you up. It happens when you least expect it and you walk away from it asking yourself “did that just happen? Or did I just dream it due to lack of sleep on an overnight bus?” With a look over to your friend, you realize that “yep that just happened”
Her name was Beaut.
To those who passed by her, didn’t know her story. They didn’t know she was traveling with her grandson. They didn’t know she had a stack of meds in her purse, or that she struggled with headaches and had pain in her past. They didn’t know that through it, she continued to trust God to lead her. They didn’t know that she would single out two racers entering their 11 month on a trip around the world to love on the least of these. They didn’t know that she came to us two specifically saying that, “I felt God calling me to come sit down and talk with you two. There is something different about you right here”
She didn’t know she would be an answer to prayer for me, one of those racers who is counting down to the second, when her flight will land in Chicago.
As she shared, I could feel the Holy Spirit within me, nudging me to pray for her… And to pray healing for her of all things.
As she was talking in her quiet, broken English, I was praying for words, for attentiveness and understanding into what she was saying.
I asked her if we could lay hands on her and pray for her. She nodded yes and moved to sit between us. 10 months ago, this wouldn’t have happened. Had a stranger sat down next to me, I would have shrugged them off and continued on with what I was doing. As I began to open my mouth and allow the words of the Spirit to come, I wondered how many more divine appointments like this, that God had placed in my life, but that I had missed due to “being to busy”.
As I wrapped up, my friend began to pray for Beaut as well. For healing and for peace upon her life. We had a few moments with her afterwards and, being who she is, my friend began to share with Beaut, God’s love for her.
Months earlier in Cambodia, we said goodbye to a fellow racer. Yet before she left- she handed each of us a wooden cross her grandpa had given her to pass out throughout her race. My friend still had that cross with her. She dug it out and passed it on to Beaut, telling her that Jesus loves her and to continue to press into Him for her peace.
With a smile and a nod she got up and went back to sit with her grandson as if nothing happened.
I don’t remember her coming into the station with her son and I don’t remember her leaving. What I do know though, is that that wasn’t a dream. It did happen.
God showed up to me today, in the form of a black South African women. I have no idea why…but I do now it was Holy and it was Divine.
Although the race is in fact drawing to a close…ministry is never over. Loving people never sleeps and it never stops.
Tonight. Tomorrow and for the rest of my life…I’ll be keeping my eyes open And my heart ready.
Come LORD Come.
