Reaffirmation

Sometimes God reaffirms things in life, which is as close to hearing God speak as I've ever been. I was given a great example of that yesterday.

Yesterday was Sunday here in Sydney, and as Christians... naturally Jenny and I went to church. This week we decided to go to Hillsong, which is world renowned. Hillsong was a lot like Southland Christian Church (for my Lexington readers) but a little smaller. They used a great deal of technology and theatrics, but that was really just icing on the cake. The real meat for me was the speakers, who were phenomenal.

I say speakers plural because after listening to the Sunday morning message, Jenny and I decided to go to the 6:00 evening service as well. The transit time was about an hour, so we stuck around the Hillsong campus in order to avoid 2 hours of unnecessary travel time.

The music was of course amazing, as one would expect given that Hillsong is known around the world for their worship music. The speakers both morning and evening were passionate, well spoken, and educated. It was one of those mornings where you think that they knew you were going to be there and had something to say just to you. It was wonderful!

The time between we spent walking around the Hillsong Church area and doing some shopping. I said from the start that the whole reason for my coming to Sydney was to spend time with Jenny, and I feel like I am doing just that while also being blessed with a lot of great experiences which I will talk about and remember for a lifetime!!! (unless I get amnesia or Alzheimer's... then I won't.)

The reaffirmation wasn't at the morning service, nor the time between, and not even at the evening service afterwards. It was at the city bus stop! As we got to the stop, the bus was just pulling away. We had missed the bus by mere moments, which seems to be fairly common for both of us. I looked at Jenny and smiled, I said something like, "It's okay! Maybe God didn't want us on that bus. He always has a reason for that sort of thing." Then thought nothing else of it.

There was a very big islander fellow who I noticed earlier on the Hillsong shuttle bus. He stuck out both because of his stature, but also because he gave up his seat on a rather lengthy trip so that a woman could sit down (yay for Chivalry!). That struck my as a very nice thing to do, and something rather uncommon in a city as large as Sydney (which is a lot like New York City).

While we waited for the city bus to pick us up from the station where the church bus had dropped us off, I saw this big man fumbling trying to attach the clasp of a bracelet on his wrist. I asked if he would like some help, and he replied, "If you'd like." So, I helped him put it on (with a little trouble myself, it was a very tight clasp). We got to talking, and it turned out that he had made that bracelet! He showed us several others, and explained the craftsmanship that he put into them. I complimented his work, telling him it looked like something you would buy in a shop. He asked if he could fit Jenny for one, and we agreed. He pulled a bracelet from his bag and tried it on her wrist. Then he removed a pair of needle nose pliers from his bag and quickly fit the bracelet to fit her wrist. Then he handed it to me, and told me to put it on her. He wished us a merry Christmas, and let Jenny keep it!

The reaffirmation came because if we had caught the bus we saw, we never would have met this islander fellow (named John). God reaffirmed the truth in what was only an aside to me. I felt like he was highlighting an insight that I spoke without realizing it. Like God told me, "Remember this lesson, it's important!" It was amazing!