When I began my daily outreach goal over 10 years ago, I
soon discovered that many of the people around me in my part of Chicago spoke different languages and couldn’t
understand me in English. I decided to learn
Spanish, and one of the first things I did was to turn my car radio to a
Spanish station to begin to get used to the language. I listened for 5 or 10 minutes and felt dumb
that I didn’t recognize any of the words from the junior high Spanish class I
had goofed off in over 30 years earlier.
I felt even worse when I finally realized it wasn’t Spanish at all that
I was listening to, but Polish!
Needless to say, I had a long way to go, but was kept
motivated by the people I constantly met whom I dreamed of sharing the Gospel
with in their heart language one day.
But language learning is especially difficult for someone who starts
studying in their late 40’s and has a poor memory and is a slow learner to
begin with, but for just that reason I’ve learned the value of persistence and
daily disciplines, and I still study almost an hour every day, over ten years into
it.
Even so, it’s still hard work to have Gospel conversations
in Spanish. I do my best and have a long
way to go, but the people I talk with are very understanding and patient with
me. In fact, it seems that my struggle
to speak in Spanish makes them take me more seriously and gives them more time
to consider what I am talking about as I have to slow down to search my memory
for the right words. They are often more
engaged in the conversation as a result, such as in a recent conversation with
a man at the park named Jose.
The point I would like to make with this is that just as
some people might look at my sharing the Gospel in Spanish and conclude that I
am “gifted” and that they could never do that, it has really only come with a
lot of practice, hard work and persistence; and in the same way being able to freely
share the Gospel with strangers I meet is also something that has only come
with a lot of practice and persistence.
But is it a “gift”?
I think that many Christians dismiss the outreach efforts of
other Christians as something they could never do themselves by simply saying “Well,
that’s just not my gift”. They might
think it’s something that just came naturally or spiritually and don’t realize
all the effort that goes into it. It
would be like seeing a marathon runner complete a race and writing off their
efforts as something that just came naturally to them without realizing all the
hours and days of running and training they had logged to be able to get that
far.
Still, I would have to say being able to share my faith
easily with strangers, and to do so in their heart language, truly IS a gift,
just the same. It is a privilege and a
blessing to be able to do so, and I have been gifted with the time it took to
practice; with my good health and a supportive family and church; with the
examples of people who have sacrificed to share the Gospel who have come before
me; and even with my high school teaching job which has given me practice as I
have had to teach some of my history classes in Spanish as a certified
bilingual teacher.
As Christians, we need to acknowledge we have been “gifted”
with abilities and skills and talents the minute we realize we are blessed to be
at all competent with something we can do that can be used to serve others and
build up the Church. And sometimes,
those gifts begin simply with the desire, time, and persistence to do the hard
work and practice it takes to get there.
¡Gracias, José, por permitirme grabar nuestra conversación! Se puede ver en https://youtu.be/msmtH6O6fsc en mi canal de YouTube.
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