These friends are unbelievers, as were most of the people in attendance I would guess. Just before the meal, the man who had officiated the ceremony was asked to say a prayer. He had been drinking, he stopped in the middle of his prayer to make a joke about someone talking, his words were shallow and hard to follow if they had any meaning, and there wasn’t any sense of respect felt.
At the end of his prayer I looked around and realized that this
was the only Jesus many of these people had ever seen. Even living in America many people have not been introduced to the God who loved them so much that He first created them to be in fellowship with Himself and then after they turned their back on Him, He sent His only Son to make things right again.
As I read in Isaiah 61, God has sent us to the poor, brokenhearted, captive and prisoners. As my eyes are opened to the state of the lost around me, I can rejoice because I have the good news they are in need of.
The real eye opener to me in this situation was that I tend to
see unbelievers as hardened hearts that have rejected the Bible and the God who loves them. What hit me was these people may not be as hard as I have thought; they may never have even seen God for who He is. They have only seen Jesus as a joke or a children’s story, not as the Way, the Truth and the Life.