Second thoughts....(Kit)

I was pleased with the work we did. We all worked so hard, and Rahab’s House looked so terrific when we were done. Sure, there is still work we could not accomplish in our time frame, but we got those walls down, we obliterated the Pink Room, we connected with the kids in a meaningful way…it was so satisfying, so wonderful…or was it? I’ve been trying to convince myself since I came home that we had done something significant in Svay Pak, but this little voice kept eating away at me, reminding me of my own word: ‘speck’. Weren’t we just a bright, eager, outraged little grain of sand on a mighty shore of degradation and human trafficking and sexual abuse? We, the little niggling voice said, were insignificant, we will be washed over, we will be forgotten . Who were we kidding?

I didn’t mind our work being ‘small’ – as I said early on in this blog, I am well used to ‘Speck Work’. I just didn’t want it to be futile. And that is what that voice was saying.

Then last week I went to the regular monthly Elders’ Meeting. We have started each meeting for the past few months by studying a chapter from a popular Christian book, and we settled in for another session this evening. But Grant, trying to recover from Cambodia, prepare for a week in Ottawa, be with his family, minister to a congregation, etc, etc, had actually forgotten to read his chapter. So, we decided that just for this meeting, we would put the book aside, and turn to Scripture. Completely on impulse, Grant said, “Let’s turn to…um…Luke 9, the feeding of the 5000”. God forgive me, I felt a flash of disappointment – what was there to discuss in this well-known story? And then Grant started to read, while my little world quietly turned upside down on me.
Of course! We WERE just grains of sand, just little threads. But in the same way that a kid with 2 dead fish and a bit of bread could actually participate in - be a living part of! - our Lord feeding 5000 people, and have twelve baskets of leftovers….we also, in our own tiny way, were making our little stitches in a heavenly tapestry. Suddenly the work we did in Svay Pak took on a wonderful, fresh significance for me. It mattered after all. It mattered to the One who counts the most.