Day 41 - July 26 - Living Your Faith Where It's Needed

For those who know me (or for those who've seen Rebellion of Thought (one of the films that Brad & I produced)) you know that I am passionate about living out faith OUTSIDE the walls of the church. Why? Simply because it's outside the church building where the people are who need to see it lived out on a daily basis.

We've had a great week of living out faith where it matters... and it goes in a circle... the greater Williamson clan serving & loving others in our midst, while other followers of Christ come alongside the Williamson's to love and serve us!

Yesterday three followers of Christ (in their early 20's) came by on their way to Hume Lake (the lake where Connor broke his neck). They just dropped in to encourage us, to pray for and with us, and then to bless us by offering to buy us lunch. Now Eric is real good at politely turning down people's offers, but he caught himself in the middle of the rejecting of the gift and told them that he's learning that the gracious acceptance of a gift allows the giver to receive the blessing of giving. So as they were dialoging about this (using phrasing most of us never use in normal conversation... i.e. "the gracious acceptance of a gift"), the image of the lunch money going to "Shane & Hope" (our homeless friends) popped into my mind (I wonder where that came from!)  ;-)

So I shared the idea that their blessing us with lunch money would be a HUGE BLESSING to Shane & Hope. Everyone liked the concept and so we took these three young folks with us and we went out to find Shane & Hope and I wish you all could have been there to see this God-ordained moment of people coming in the name of Christ to bless these folks with no strings attached. Hope couldn't handle it... she turned around to cry. Shane embraced us all with sincere gratefulness.

FYI, on Thursday Hope's fifteen year old son was in surgery from 9AM until 12:30AM FRIDAY morning! That's 15 1/2 hours! They rebuilt his face and went ahead and did the surgeries on his arm and legs at the same time. Shane reported that Hope's boy was actually looking like himself again... which had to be a huge blessing to their family.

Then late last night as we were preparing to leave the hospital it was time for us to, as Eric says, "make fools of ourselves for Christ". So we all knelt around our group of chairs for our final prayer at the hospital before we left for the night. As Eric was praying, Shane walked into the lobby and saw us. He joined us in prayer on our knees and put his hands on Eric's and my shoulder. When Eric finished Shane said he had something to add... and what followed was the most honest and humble prayer I've heard in a long time... about how grateful he was for the Williamson clan and the way we've loved and taken care of him and Hope. It was a very humbling and amazing moment as we saw his faith beginning to grow.

Everyone got their chance to hug on Shane as we said our goodnights. And I'm glad to report that for the time being they have a place to rest their heads at night... it won't last forever, but at least for last night they didn't have to sleep on the grassy patch down by the train tracks.

Kent

Amazed in Fresno