En Serio

Not many things rip my heart out quite like Spain. After all, I've been beating the topic to death for a little more than six years. But this hits hard.
While I was on vacation I got an email from Miss Ruth's pastor in Barcelona. He specifically asked for the brothers and sisters at Tenth to pray because he's been diagnosed with advanced mesothelioma. Pastor Cerni is the minister at the only reformed church in the city. As I posted previously, he heads a book ministry that equips vast portions of the Hispanic world. And he's been caring for Miss Ruth.
I wish I were more spiritually mature and could say that I totally see God's purpose to build the church in Spain. But I'm sad for my friend. Sad for his family and his flock. Sad, perhaps selfishly, that I'm not back there to help. Whatever that means.
So, pray for this dear man, his family, his congregation. Pray for his treatment. For other nationals to be raised up to support the church there. For Spain.

Entiendes lo que lees?

Newsworks file photo

He sat next to me on the subway, the Spanish tract (some variation on the four laws or the like) pinched between his fingers. He wasn't so much reading it as staring at the paper, as though expecting to burn a hole through it.
I don't like speaking to random strangers on public transit. I'm a big fan of personal safety, for one thing. But I kept feeling convicted to say something before I arrived at my stop.
So I asked him if he understood what he was reading.
His head, bowed toward the tract, now snapped up. "Yeah, I understand it," he responded in English. He twisted around in the seat and peered at me. "You know Spanish? Like, read and write it," he said, almost as a statement of fact. I nodded slightly.
Then the words came tumbling out. "I came to the United States from Puerto Rico when I was three. But when I was fourteen I got a Spanish bible and it (he paused)....it just made sense. All of it."
My stop was coming up fast and the train slowed. So I said the only thing I was thinking.
"I pray you find the truth."
He said he hoped he did too. The subway cars slid away from the station. I didn't get to share the entire gospel. But I don't think I was supposed to. Sometimes it's tiny moments that change everything. I'm praying that God spurs the next person who crosses paths with him to give him a kernel of truth. And so on.