I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ (Philemon 1:6).
In our last newsletter (ahem, a few months ago…), we shared some of our friend’s story of coming to Christ. I occasionally meet with her to pray and to read Scripture together. As I think I’ve mentioned before, Robert is the kind of person who really loves to wrestle with the complexities of faith and reads about the theology of the atonement for fun (since reading Spiritual Pathways by Gary Thomas, I now understand that this is a way that he relates to and worships God). I, on the other hand, love the simplicity of the gospel. Last Sunday as I met with our friend to read about Jesus turning water to wine, I was reminded of my love for the simple stories of Jesus, the value of reading these stories in community, and that talking about Christ – sharing our faith, essentially – broadens our understanding of him. (for extroverts/verbal processors like me, this verse in Philemon makes a lot of sense ;).
It was a simple reading of Scripture. I was tired, honestly, and hadn’t prepped much at all. We first read the text in the version we use in church. She read smoothly and impressively. When I asked her if she got the general gist of the story, she basically said, “Nope, not at all.” …so we read it again in the Japanese Living Bible (if I only remembered where I put my manga version…).
We prayed that, through reading Scripture together, we would have a better understanding of Christ. I guess I had an agenda, though, as I wanted her to see how Christ’s first miracle had to do with helping people save face in front of guests – maintaining honor, preventing shame, and all that good stuff.
She was basically like, “yeah, cool, whatever.” And then she talked about Jesus choosing servants to show his first miracle to. “But about this shame thing…” “Roberta, he showed his power to the servants.” Then we talked for a few minutes about the theme of Jesus actively choosing the weak and powerless to reveal himself to. I kind of went into teacher mode for a few minutes (ironic given my level of Japanese), but I was struck and humbled by her wonder.
