Tuesday mornings mean two things for me: prepping for a full day of teaching music lessons and publishing a blog post. And two weeks ago, my Tuesday morning was a tangled one indeed.
As I was doing the preparing part, I was also doing the praying part, about what God would have me publish that day. I had several ideas to which I was quite partial, but God suddenly prompted me: Why not post on pride? I thought of several reasons why not to write an article on pride, but since most of them were based in pride, they fell somewhat short. So the topic was decided (how turning my God-given light on myself in pride leaves the world in darkness: read the post here!), and I just had to find the time to write it!
This particular teaching day, I had several cancellations which left me with a free morning. There was the time to write my article, but where could I write it?
You see, Mikaela and I use a local church to teach our lessons on Tuesdays, so even though I didn’t have lessons to teach, I was still stuck at the church with no internet with which to publish a post. As I began to think through the problem, I remembered that furthermore, the church had no three-prong plug-ins to even plug in my laptop cord, and our local library to which I normally would have resorted didn’t open for another hour.
These all seemed like tiny hairs of an everyday tangle, but unbeknownst to me, none of them were actually a tangle: they were part of an intricately tatted thread of lace that God was weaving for my day.
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| Melanie sitting in the same tea shop I was enjoying. Photo Credit |
I was left with no choice but to go to my favorite tea shop, order a steaming hot Lavender Milk Tea with Mango Popping Boba (delicious!), and settle down with my laptop and Bible to write the post God had laid on my heart for the day. That was my mission. And yet, even as I was typing away about being a light in a dark world, I couldn’t have guessed that God was preparing another mission for me.
She was a sweet looking older woman who approached me, and I instantly realized had observed her earlier, chatting with two older men in suits.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” she said with a smile as she came up to me. “But is that a Bible on your lap?”
“Yes!” I replied, wonderingly.
“That is the tiniest Bible I have ever seen!” She exclaimed. “How do you read out of that?”
“Well, it’s my travel Bible,” I explained, and we exchanged a few other pleasantries before she handed me a tract and began talking. It didn’t take long for me to realize that we were not on the same page and that, in fact, she was a Jehovah’s Witness. (You can read about another witnessing encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness here.)
Finally, she asked me point-blank, “What are you?”
The ultimate question, loaded with existential preconceptions. I gulped a quick prayer before diving in.
“I’m a Christian,” I said, and wasted no time in getting to the “good” stuff. “I believe that Jesus is the only Son of God, and that He died and rose again to save me from my sins.”
She was nodding in agreement with me. “Oh, yes, and you have it so right that Jesus is the Son of God, because so many people get that wrong!”
I knew she was misunderstanding, although I wasn’t yet quite sure what she was misunderstanding, so I tried a different tack. “Yes, but I believe in the Trinity, that Jesus is One with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.”
Suddenly, she didn’t quite agree with me anymore, and a new door opened in our conversation as she said, “But you can’t find that in the Bible!”
“No,” I agreed, “That word ‘Trinity’ isn’t in the Bible, but the Bible clearly teaches that God is three in one.” At this point, my heart pounding with adrenaline, I scraped through my brain to try to remember a verse, any verse, that could help communicate this truth to this lady. And you know what? Thinking back, I can’t even remember which verse I took her to at that moment!
I do know that the passage I found after thumbing through my Bible, was not “The Perfect Verse for Empirically Proving the Truth of the Trinity.”
I know that the words I used did not follow the “Three Step Plan for Converting a Woman in a Tea Shop.”
I know that the conversation that followed was not “The Benchmark Conversation You all Should Replicate with a Jehovah’s Witness.”
But I do know that the Holy Spirit she was discounting as a “force” lives inside me and was guiding me, comforting me, helping me.
I know that for about ten minutes I was able to discuss Jesus with a woman who used His name but missed the entire person of Jesus Christ our Lord!
I was able to share with her from John 1:1-3
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
To a woman who says that God the Father created the world, but Jesus did not, I imagine that verse was worldview-shaking.
I also turned to one of my favorite chapters, John 17, and although the conversation took a different tangent before I could get to these verses, they would have been perfect to share as well:
“That [the believers] all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.” {John 17:21-22}
As she prepared to leave, I told her I wanted to leave her with this thought, which I know the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart: “If you do not believe that Jesus Christ is one with God, and that while on earth He was fully God yet fully man, then you can’t believe that His redemption on the cross for all mankind was enough.”
“But it was enough!” she insisted.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But you can’t believe that unless you believe that Jesus was one with God.”
With that, she left. As soon as she did, I wasted no time in googling “verses to share with a Jehovah’s Witness about the Trinity.”
I found all the verses I should have shared. I found this excellent website, with all the information I should have known.
And I encourage you to study to show yourself approved, and to be prepared. But I also encourage you to seize those precious missions that God entrusts to you at the moment they occur and do one thing, perfectly prepared or not: talk about Jesus.
Jesus, after all, is the stumbling block for all other religions.
Jesus, after all, is my first love!
And Jesus, after all, is the reason we share, not to prove how intellectually brilliant our crippling arguments are. Thank goodness!
And I prayed. For a nameless woman who seemed so lost. For my own failings in sharing.
And I gave thanks. For a free morning and for three-prong laptop cords and for a library that opened an hour too late. It was in that giving thanks that I began to realize that perhaps the library opened right on time for God to turn these tangled hairs of my morning into a thread of lace that was beautiful beyond my wildest dreams.
Photo 3: Marlana
Scripture
taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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