Leave it to God to do the judging; we are just called to love

Have you ever seen those people who stand on the streets holding cardboard signs that either say, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is near", or "Jesus died for your sins"? If you haven't seen them on the streets of downtown, you've probably seen them in an end of the world type movie, like 2012.

When I was shopping with a sister in a busy intersection of Mong Kok this afternoon, we saw one of these men. We just walked by him, and I jokingly said to my friend, "heh, maybe we should go say hi and give him a shout-out." Jokingly, because I was taught not talk to strangers. Not thinking too much more about it, we spent the next 2 hours wandering around and looking at the interesting knick-kacks in Flower Market.

As we were leaving, we spotted the old man again! The "normal" me would just smile and walk by, but for some reason, I turned to my girlfriend and asked if we should go say hi, to which she agreed! We timidly went up to him together to ask if we could buy him a drink, since he had been standing there holding the sign for some time now. He declined our offer, but began chatting with us about theology. Splendid! I love talking to theology; this was turning out to be much less frightening than I imagined it to be!

The conversation we had was quite interesting, and personally, I questioned a lot of his theology and also how effective his method of standing there with a cardboard sign was. However, I realized that it's not for me, but for God, to judge; I was only there to give the man encouragement. I pray that somehow and some way, God will use this man to point others to Jesus. Because the simple Truth, with everything stripped away is that "for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

An unexpected love opportunity

I was really looking forward to catching up with a sister over dinner. We were both super busy this summer, and hadn't really seen much of each other. Even finding a time that we were both free to meet was quite a challenge. So you can tell my excitement when dinner time drew near. I was literally skipping down the street on the way over to meet her.

We ended up going over to her house for dinner, and although we spent some time catching each other up on what's been going on, an unexpected house guest arrived (her brother's friend, who was in town for a holiday) and joined us at the dinner table.

Hm, so much for girl talk. So, in efforts to be welcoming to the house guest, we ended up talking about everything else under the sun, like scaling mountains and internet speeds, to life at boarding school and Judgment Day; everything besides what I had intended to talk to my close girlfriend about.

Honestly, in the back of my mind, I was trying all night to figure out an excuse to get away from this house guest, so that I could catch up with my sister. But perhaps it was God's plan for us to talk to this house guest instead, because for a part of the night, we talked at length about faith issues and his personal view of faith. In retrospect, I feel very privileged that I had this opportunity to have such a heart to heart talk with someone whom I just met, and I appreciate his honesty in opening up his heart to a stranger, like me.

Although I didn't share the gospel with him, but I pray that seeds were planted, and that God will make them grow. I pray that he will discover that following Jesus is not about following a set of rules and rituals, but about having a personal relationship with the Creator and Savior of this world, who loves him dearly.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

May we continue to lay down our agendas for the sake of reaching out and helping those who are still walking in darkness!