Sunday morning I delivered the Scriptures with a delightful--and high octane!--team of young people from Athens. On one street a woman shouted at us and walked ahead bad-mouthing to her neighbors, but across the street another woman quietly asked questions and accepted our gift of a New Testament. She then invited us to follow her back down the block as she told the same neighbors there was nothing to fear. To us she said, "If they reject it, that is their sin; but if they believe, they believe."
Here is Kayla, my partner that day in Alexandroupoli, and our God-prepared neighborhood champion...
Everywhere we go there is a mix of receptiveness and suspicion. The Lord has obviously prepared many hearts to receive the message of Jesus Christ with joy and a word of thanks, but some respond angrily. One man at an apartment building picked up and threw six bags with New Testaments we had left out onto the street. In the village we visited Friday a priest drove up, hair on fire, complaining about the Bible distribution and pleading with us to turn over all the Bibles to him. In the same place our fleet of four cars was rounded up by police and passports were checked to make sure we weren't smuggling people in from Bulgaria or Turkey (we were near both borders).
I'm sure some of the hubbub we encounter has to do with very natural and understandable concerns, but sometimes it's not hard to see that forces of evil are at work hinder what God is doing and to steal away the Word of Christ from those who need it.
As the days pass I think more and more about the harvest to come. Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful." God will make it happen. One day we will see it.
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