HMA in Texas was a fast-paced time of ministry, visiting friends and family, vacation Bible school, and helping out with our two supporting churches. One of our churches, North Highlands Bible Church scheduled us to visit a number of families for Sunday dinner after church. Two families stand out and blessed us immensely. We’ll present one here now, the other in a later post.
A few families, like Judy and me, are OINKS (one income no kids). We don’t know why God didn’t give us kids, but in His grand plan, He chose not to. And we have accepted that. I will admit the term OINKS makes me want to “pig out”. Excuse me while I take a break to eat some pork chops (seriously, right after I wrote this, I had pork chops for supper!)
The Sunday we visited Trey and Kristen after church, Kristen and her daughter greeted us and cordially invited us in. Another young lady came and said hi, introducing herself. And then another kid came. And another. And another. I thought, “It seems like the kids are coming out of the walls here. They must have a lot of company.” WRONG! God has given Trey and Kristen (and they have lovingly accepted) EIGHT kids. Wow! Twelve strong gathered at the dinner table, and please accept my apologies for not remembering nobody’s names! There were too many!
In Isaiah 8, Isaiah went to the royal courtyard in Jerusalem. Since he was a prophet to the kings of Judah, they were used to seeing him there. However, that particular day, he went to publicly rebuke the Judean king and nobles for making an alliance with neighboring kings against Assyria. Judean kings confirmed the alliance by participating in idol worship, rejecting the protection of the LORD God of Israel. Isaiah had the nerve to even take his two sons and pronounce the judgment as they stood by his side (8.18). Imagine the dirty looks the kids received as their dad rebuked the nobles!
Later, I got up the nerve to ask them later how people responded to them when they went to public places. Some have been very encouraging. Others have not—and yes, they have received a few dirty looks. Yet their kids love the LORD, they were very well behaved while we were there, and we had a fun visit in large part because of the kids!
In fact, a couple of the girls told us of their trip to New Orleans to help an inner-city church do a vacation Bible school. I was impressed at the way they spoke to us--it was like we were talking to adults! Their experiences eerily reminded us of Haiti—the way witchcraft and superstition can destroy a culture while the one thing that can lift a culture out of its misery is the good news of Jesus Christ.
I have every reason to believe that these kids will grow up to become Godly, responsible members of our churches and society!
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