This weekend we were privileged to visit a landscape like no other we’d ever experienced.  Steep mountainsides cut with waterfalls and topped with glaciers.  Bare rock peaks wrapped in mist dropping into turquoise lakes.  Not one peak, but hundreds standing shoulder to shoulder in every direction.  The wind and the wildness pressed into us.  There we stood, the four of us from different parts of the earth equally enthralled with this rugged wilderness.  How did we come from so far to become so close?  

Nine years ago when this story began in Tennessee, I would have never imagined that I’d be standing near the border of Canada on a windy Northwest mountaintop arm in arm with a brilliant young woman professor and her equally brilliant Ph.D. husband sharing a lovely trip with Husband.  How did we come to share our lives with this winsome couple?  Just a small obedience to that quiet voice that beckoned us to offer hospitality and friendship to international students.  As we travel together, they tell us about their latest adventures beginning a new life in a new state with new jobs and a new church.  Our hearts soar as we listen.  We think back to the first time we met her as a freshly arrived graduate student doing the work of adjusting to a new country who welcomed a family type relationship with an old couple.  We reminisce together about years later meeting her not-yet-husband a few weeks after his arrival in the US.  Such a sweet love story that we were privileged to observe!  We laugh together about their wedding ceremony kiss that accidentally transferred her bright red lipstick to his lips.  They show us photos of their lovely, bright new house and I think of the dark, spare apartments they lived in during their university days.  We have history together and we relish that.  We repeat how thankful we are for his faithfulness in communicating with us regularly during years of separation, allowing us to participate in their lives long distance.  

The next day, I’m pressing the little silver button on my camera as fast as the flash can recycle to photograph another young international couple. We are the foreigners in this group of internationals who have come together to shower the soon-to-be-mom-of-two with love.  Babe-in-arms to grandpas.  I’ve been tasked with documenting this surprise shower.  And what a joy it was to help celebrate this family that we have had the privilege of watching from before marriage to graduation to first baby and first job and now second baby soon to arrive.  Her English isn’t perfect, but she excels in caring for others and opening her home to other internationals and to us.  Her husband took us on a personal tour of the famous company he works for.  He can’t divulge his latest project, so we don’t ask questions.  We’re so proud of his career success and his love for his family.  Watching him play with his toddler and be so pleased to help make the surprise shower for his wife happen makes our hearts swell. I think of the first time he sat at our table eight years ago as a graduate student.  His friends who had been enjoying the regular fellowship at our humble house had asked if they could invite him to come along because he was going through a difficult time and his friends thought our little group would lift his spirits.  Little did we know that years later we would be enjoying his kind and generous hospitality in his beautiful big home.

All this joy got me thinking about how we got this privilege of sharing life with these promising young people.  This series of events was set in motion by finding a new church shortly after our move to Tennessee and simply showing up.  One Sunday in a Baby Boomer Bible class we had a guest speaker who made us aware of the need of international students for connection with families in their new environment.  Surely we can just invite a student over for a meal on a regular basis, Husband and I agreed.  Our hearts went out to these young foreigners since we had been foreigners ourselves during ten years abroad.  Then we had to choose to set aside other things in order to have time to befriend.  We had to find courage to step into this unknown and wisdom to see their needs and the best way to meet them.  We needed humility to be learners about their thinking, culture, and values.  We needed patience to repeat, give the benefit of the doubt, and not jump to conclusions.  We needed energy to join in activities to support them.  In short, we responded and we hung in there because God gave us love for these dear students and provided all we needed to contribute to their lives.  We had no idea that our first two student guests would expand to include a total of 24 over the course of the next six years.  We had no idea of the joy and richness these students would bring us.  We can’t imagine not having them in our lives.  As of last month, they have all graduated and moved including us, but our hearts are still connected.  We love hearing their news and cheering them on from a distance. We often think of what we would have missed if we would have refused the call that Sunday morning to come alongside young people in need of friendship.

So what’s the point for you, dear Reader?  I think it is to have open ears to God’s voice.  We don’t have to do outstanding, dramatic things.  So often it’s in the everyday that God shows up to do amazing things his way.  We don’t have to be smart, clever, accomplished, highly educated, or articulate.  We do have to be willing, humble, and obedient.  God will give us all we need to meet the needs of others, including the desire to help.  All we have to do is cooperate with him.  Are you listening to his gentle whisper?

“It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

And a voice said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  1 Kings 19:11-13

“Next Paul and Silas traveled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia because the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time. . . they headed north, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there.  So instead, they went on to the seaport of Troas.

That night Paul had a vision: A man from northern Greece was standing there, pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!”  So we decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us to preach the Good News there… On the Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer, and we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there. One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying. She and her household were baptized.”  Acts 16:6-10,13-15

Top photo courtesy of Bellevue Land Rover Blog, other park photos courtesy of North Cascades National Park