“What do you mean you don’t practice violin when you get home from school?”
It was the question I held in, rather than blurting it out at my friend. We had been discussing our every day activities, and she was telling me what she did after school. I sat there in complete shock. It was a defining moment of my year in Mrs. Dawson’s 5th grade class room at North Ridge Elementary School.
Didn’t everyone practice violin and piano before they were allowed to play outside?
But, it was true. Not everyone had the same life experiences as I did. When I looked around at my 5th grade classmates I came to the realization that we were all very different. Somehow this was my first reality check on the subject. I was very naive.
As the year passed by I came to understand a very important fact. Music practice wasn’t the only thing I didn’t have in common with some others. There were some who had not experienced something else that was very important to me. Many had not met Jesus.
Oh, maybe they knew who He was, but they hadn’t really chosen to be His follower. At ten years of age this was very hard to understand. I had been immersed in church and other religious activities, like Sunday School and AWANA. But even at that young age, I had made my choice to follow. I was a practicing believer in Jesus.
Doesn’t everyone believe in Him?
Even now that’s what I find myself asking from the viewpoint of my “totally – immersed -in- church life”. It becomes so easy to forget that there are many who still don’t know about Him, or who don’t believe in Him. Me, safely living in my Spirit- saturated existence while they drown in their unbelief, unfamiliar with the loving Savior that I know, struggling for survival.
Every once in a while He brings me back to reality by shining the light of His Son, melting away the fog that clouds my heart. And I need it because I tend to be content, truthfully sometimes I’m indifferent. However, as I move through life, I find Him opening my eyes to all of the people – a mom with her young children at the park, the person in front of me in the check out line, or maybe the other family taking piano lessons after us… all are people I could have the opportunity to meet and get acquainted with. I hear him whisper to my heart,”Do you suppose they know Me?” and I wonder at the thought: Could He use me for His purposes?
He not only can, it is part of His master plan for reaching those who don’t know Him. In Matthew 28 He commissions all believers:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
As different as we all are, as much as we are all individuals made uniquely by Him, there is one way that we are all the same. Each one of us needs the loving gracious rescue of a Savior. There is a way for those who don’t know Him yet to meet Him : I must diligently follow Him, being His hands and feet to those in need, bringing the gospel to those who haven’t heard. And when the time is right, His Holy Spirit will do the work.
Heavenly Father, Let your light shine through me. Remind me again and again that there are those around me that don’t know You! Help me to be brave and intentional about loving them the way You would have me to. amen.
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Romans 10:14
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