God Answers Prayer

Over the last two months at church, we have hosted a couple of fellowship dinners at the local YWCA where we rent our meeting space. We looked to these dinners as a time of meeting new faces, welcoming these residents of the Y, and maybe even providing a church home for some who were looking for that. We prayed about it, for God to open doors and bless us with this opportunity, and He did. But maybe not in the way we presupposed.

There's a woman who has come the last two weeks who has no shame and telling you, upon meeting you, "I'm bipolar." She also has reported, in so many words, that she isn't taking her prescribed medications, and it is evident by her behaviors. Among others, she interrupts our silence during the sermon with observations about the texts, frequently speaks in non-sequiturs, or gets up and paces around the room at the prompting of whatever voices she may or may not here. I'm not making fun here, I'm speaking as a professional.

There was the woman in the front row who didn't know here Old Testament from her New Testament and kept shouting, "What? Where's that?" during the Scripture reading.

Or how about the other woman, also seated in the front row, who coughed/sneezed/expectorated into her hand for most of the service, and then reached for a handful of communion bread as the tray went by, without ever having sanitized those hands.

I think it's great. We prayed for people, and God sent them. They don't look like us, they don't act like us, and that's wonderful. God's little way of saying, "You want to serve my people? Here they are, as I created them. Now love them, church."

Can I get an Amen?