The McQueary Clan: Juan 3:16

Have you ever just wondered what would happen if you just went with the flow? If you just saw a need and met it? If you just said God here I am, send me? And then you actually went?

It has been so beautiful to watch one of my very best friends, Charlene, first encounter Christ, my Savior. Something that I had been praying for since the moment I met her. And then I can't even begin to explain the joy that has overcome me in watching her grow and mature in that encounter. To see and be a part of her not only realizing, but also experiencing that we were blessed by God so that we could be a blessing, so that through us the world would be blessed. The very promise that God gave Abram in Genesis 12:2-3.

Our friendship has blossomed into so much more than ever before, we are now truly sisters, because we are both daughters of our great and mighty God. I am so blessed and inspired by her faith and how that faith is so naturally expressed in her actions. I experienced a piece of that this weekend.

Saturday morning, we again ventured out together to Food for Thought downtown. I've gone several times now, even with Char once. It is in itself an amazing thing to be a part of. This Saturday, Charlene and I, along with her kids and a couple of friends she brought along for their first time, were the last people to leave. Why?....because we met Juan.

If we had let him be, Juan was just another homeless guy collecting his free lunch and venturing on his way. However, we sat and spoke with Juan. Introducing ourselves. Not only introducing ourselves but asking him how we could meet his needs, what his biggest struggles with life on the streets were, where he was from and how he came to be where he is today. We invest a few shorts moments of our lives into him, the forgotten.

Juan does his best to keep himself clean. He sleeps many nights in a park in downtown. He has a bike for transportation and has an outlook that only God could possibly give to someone in his life situation. Juan is from Mexico. He came here for work and has been unable to find any. His English is broken, but remarkably is quite understandable and what he couldn't say or understand, God brought enough of my Spanish back to me to be able to communicate. Juan isn't greedy. He's not selfish. He's alone. And he's not asking for hand-outs. In fact, when we asked him what we could bring him, he replied that God gives him what he needs. Which sparked a whole nother conversation with him. Bottom line: Charlene invited him to come to church with us to her church Cedar Creek. Most people down there, I'm not sure would have responded as he did. His smile was from ear to ear.

He told us that a friend wanted to take him to find work today and he said no, he'd go downtown to find food. He told he didn't know why he came down because he didn't know we did Food for Thought. He said he came to get food, but now God give him real food tomorrow. The only thing he carried in his bag strapped to the back of his bike was his Bible, tattered and torn. We even spent time sharing scripture together and he read Jeremiah 33 to us in Spanish. I can tell you in that moment Juan was ministering to Charlene and I, not the other way around.

Well, Juan showed up at the library this morning when Charlene arrived to pick him up for church. They gave him a change of clothes, not that he really needed it, he already was pretty clean, and even so God says come as you are. Charlene's family took him to breakfast and brought him to church. I met them there and was able to give him a new backpack and a mini fan. I wish I could have given him more and I know Char was having the same feelings. But what we did and were able to give him was everything we had at that moments we encountered him and together we encountered Christ in worship.

Juan 3:16 "Porque tanto amó Dios al mundo, que dio a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo el que cree en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna."