Immersion
Going to write a lot of the things that happened from the beginning of this year. The thread, the main story line that weaves itself through all the events, happenings and everything else is this: that the Lord planned each and every little part and put each one of them in place, one by one, not a single step missing, each one somehow linking up with the previous one and ..."qiao miao-ly" leading up to the next one. He laid everything out perfectly and ready,and walked each step of the way with me.
About 2 or 3 weeks after my 'A's, I was surfing the net looking for a job. Somehow I bumped into the TTC website and clicked on ministry opportunities just for fun. I was thinking of reading something or another about tentmakers rather than about the temporary job I was looking for. But I did see this bit on the page where they were asking for admin assistants. Somehow it struck me that I should try calling some of the telephone numbers given there.
Ok... the descriptive detail part is really getting too long. I'll just have to stop ALL of it. Anyhow it took many phone calls and connections and quite a bit of waiting. The wage rate was low and the idea (of me working in a church office) preposterous. But somehow, I knew I wanted the job. For no reason I could say. So I waited and hung on.
I did ask the Lord to put me where He wants me, open doors and everything. And I asked Him for two things if He did want me to work in the church office: opportunities to help and opportunites to learn. I have only one word to describe the way He answered this prayer. Abundance. Very, very literally.
All through the six months, I felt as though somehow the Lord has programmed me, like a computer, to be a sponge. Not to suck people dry, but to absorb. From anywhere and everywhere, anyone and everyone, I just kept learning tons and tons in everything I do, such that I started feeling strange I should be collecting a wage for it.
I still remember. All my friends hated their jobs. I loved mine. I love sitting in an office where they play Christian music, where I could assume, that each person who walks in and out not only calls him/herself a Christian, but really loves the Lord. I love being able to start talking to anyone assuming that the person shares the same values I have, knowing that no one within a mile is going to start saying something funny or rude about my God. It's all just so......comfortable.
I learnt that I'm not the only person on earth who wants to hide in some corner at odd moments, just to talk to the Lord for a while. Pastors, those on course, they all do that. Well, I discovered I was normal after all these years.
When the temporary staff (plus me) get together to 'eat snake', well sometimes we do talk crap together, but most of the time, someone will just grab a guitar and we'll all have impromptu worship. These are people who just couldn't leave God out of their conversation.
When I went upstairs to the second floor and worked in the Facilities Dept in March, it was a different group of pastors, a different group of admin staff. But these were still people who laughed at me and made me laugh. Who taught me some things when they talked to me and a great deal more things in the way they did things and dealt with the people around them. I learnt to really, really live with these people, not just to survive, but to love to be around them, and enjoy their company immensely. I think I once said this to the Lord, "Lord, I think I've fallen in love with Your people."
It was only later that I realised the whole thing was an immersion scheme of sorts, that the Lord planned the whole thing, yes, to let me learn a lot of things from His people, but also just to teach me to live with His people. God wanted me to live with His people, as He said, so much that He practically planned an immersion program tailor-made for me! It was kind of an experiment. The best part of it was that it worked! He made sure of that.
About 2 or 3 weeks after my 'A's, I was surfing the net looking for a job. Somehow I bumped into the TTC website and clicked on ministry opportunities just for fun. I was thinking of reading something or another about tentmakers rather than about the temporary job I was looking for. But I did see this bit on the page where they were asking for admin assistants. Somehow it struck me that I should try calling some of the telephone numbers given there.
Ok... the descriptive detail part is really getting too long. I'll just have to stop ALL of it. Anyhow it took many phone calls and connections and quite a bit of waiting. The wage rate was low and the idea (of me working in a church office) preposterous. But somehow, I knew I wanted the job. For no reason I could say. So I waited and hung on.
I did ask the Lord to put me where He wants me, open doors and everything. And I asked Him for two things if He did want me to work in the church office: opportunities to help and opportunites to learn. I have only one word to describe the way He answered this prayer. Abundance. Very, very literally.
All through the six months, I felt as though somehow the Lord has programmed me, like a computer, to be a sponge. Not to suck people dry, but to absorb. From anywhere and everywhere, anyone and everyone, I just kept learning tons and tons in everything I do, such that I started feeling strange I should be collecting a wage for it.
I still remember. All my friends hated their jobs. I loved mine. I love sitting in an office where they play Christian music, where I could assume, that each person who walks in and out not only calls him/herself a Christian, but really loves the Lord. I love being able to start talking to anyone assuming that the person shares the same values I have, knowing that no one within a mile is going to start saying something funny or rude about my God. It's all just so......comfortable.
I learnt that I'm not the only person on earth who wants to hide in some corner at odd moments, just to talk to the Lord for a while. Pastors, those on course, they all do that. Well, I discovered I was normal after all these years.
When the temporary staff (plus me) get together to 'eat snake', well sometimes we do talk crap together, but most of the time, someone will just grab a guitar and we'll all have impromptu worship. These are people who just couldn't leave God out of their conversation.
When I went upstairs to the second floor and worked in the Facilities Dept in March, it was a different group of pastors, a different group of admin staff. But these were still people who laughed at me and made me laugh. Who taught me some things when they talked to me and a great deal more things in the way they did things and dealt with the people around them. I learnt to really, really live with these people, not just to survive, but to love to be around them, and enjoy their company immensely. I think I once said this to the Lord, "Lord, I think I've fallen in love with Your people."
It was only later that I realised the whole thing was an immersion scheme of sorts, that the Lord planned the whole thing, yes, to let me learn a lot of things from His people, but also just to teach me to live with His people. God wanted me to live with His people, as He said, so much that He practically planned an immersion program tailor-made for me! It was kind of an experiment. The best part of it was that it worked! He made sure of that.
posted by judith at
11:10 pm
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