Friday Night Notes

all pretty wretched...


Well... there was snow on the ground for our night of street preaching. Winter is definitely here, I'm afraid. It was cold tonight, but not terribly so. Pastor Tim and I were able to preach the Gospel for nearly three hours, and only called it quits because I needed to go back to my workplace to fix a misbehaving mass spectrometer.

The picture attached to this post was one of the few (the very few) blessings I received from people in the market tonight. A group of young people had lined up near one of our Gospel signs and sang beautiful Christmas hymns. I stood nearby, offering people Bible tracts and enjoyed the wonderful sound of praise to our God. I didn't get a chance to speak with any of these good souls... I get the feeling the cold wind got the best of them after a few minutes of singing. The Lord bless them for their sacrifice of praise to the Living God, and that, in the sight of all men.

The night, in general, was pretty wretched. There was even a great deal of sadness surrounding the small choir in the picture above. Most of the people who walked by them, ignored them. Some even mocked them. It was an awful sight... and what made it worse was the sight of another musical act just down the street, attracting some devoted fans: a guitar-playing drug addict singing old Beatles songs. He got nothing but praise. What a mess!

The "highlight" of my night came when I dealt with a drunk homosexual who came after me with the incredibly cerebral argument of "You're a sinner if you eat shrimp!" (a reference to the the dietary restrictions in the Mosaic covenant). After doing my best to keep my eyes from rolling back into my skull, I explained the Gospel to the scorner who showed his appreciation by telling me not to judge people (I had yet to point out any particular sin), and then the wretch grabbed me by the collar and gave me a fat smooch! Can you say... DISGUSTING???

Wretched absurdity.

A short time after that nonsense, I was forced to find another spot from which to preach from because a couple a men decided to use the parking garage behind me to smoke marijuana; I can't stand the smell of pot. As if the drugs weren't bad enough, one of the men kept spouting off anti-Semitic slurs that annoyed me so much, I thought it best for me to leave. I remember him saying:

"Jews are evil man! They control the world with credit. They're organized and evil."

To which I responded that drug users, in my book, were evil. They didn't say anything. So I took a parting shot before walking down the street to another preaching spot:

"You're in really bad shape my poor friend, all that hatred toward Jews... and it will be a Jew who will one day judge your soul."

Deafening silence was once again their response.

In closing, I must say that there were a couple of upsides in tonight's street preaching endeavour:

1- There were more people in the market tonight than last week, and that, despite the cold weather and snow.

2- Due to the larger crowds, we gave out a few more Bible tracts.

3- A woman did drive by us as we were making our way home with our Bible signs, and called out to us with a "Praise God! The Lord bless you men!"

The Lord use our efforts as He sees fit. May all glory, honour and praise be to the Living God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen, and amen.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism