Yesterday a fourth woman showed up! She wanted to do the homework together, too. I was nearly speechless. Friend #4 is a very quiet woman who participated in our first Alpha Course and has been hanging around the fringes since then. She's inconsistent about attending our meetings, and I have heard her speaking negatively before about the the two women who I've been doing this homework with. You can imagine, then, why I was pretty shocked to see her walk in the door at 3!
Our homework hour went super well, and it was Friend #4 who left me the most encouraged. I've seen her move from mostly uninterested in God to curious about God to excited about God and now I think to committed to God. It's thrilling also to see her love for God transform the way she interacts with other people, these two women in particular. I think her judgment has given way to love, or at least something like it.
"Homework hour" is turning out to be a lot like most of the things that are going on in my ministry these days. Leading up to them, I'm filled with an odd sense of dread. I'd rather just bake cookies and watch movies. When I get there, it's a whole new story. Being with people and loving on them have become the deepest joys of my days and weeks. And remembering what a liar my dread was about the previous event helps me to combat it for the coming one.
