Posted by Helen on: 02.13.2008 /
I was interested to read Rebecca’s account of how she responded when a ’sweet young woman’ approached her with a tract yesterday. Rebecca believes in Jesus but not in evangelism with tracts.
Tonight, a sweet young woman asked me nicely, “Have you gotten one of these yet?” She had a cartoon-y religious tract in her hand. She continued somewhat feebly, “It’s just a story with some fun cartoons.” I smiled at her and told her I wasn’t interested.
I’m really not. I’m horrified that God’s desire for us to live in relationships with one another has been perverted to handing out tracts blindly to trick people into saying that they prefer Jesus to Hell. The ones aimed at children are particularly horrendous. I’m not good at relationships and will avoid them altogether often but at least I don’t pretend I’m in them by handing out tracts.
The girl walked away and I pulled out my quilt that I’m working on. I experienced a slight tug on my heart that might have been God telling me that I should engage this woman in conversation to help her down the path toward emerging Christianity but the only things I could think to say to her were snarky, so I ignored the tugging. Now that I think about, those are ignoble goals since it presumes that I have some truth that those silly evangelicals don’t, which is not at all where I want to end up on this spiritual journey. What God probably meant was that this woman needed to be loved and possibly I could show that love by being willing to listen to her and that in listening, God’s light might shine through me. But I didn’t realize that until now.
She came back to ask me what I was knitting. Ugh. Still, she was sweet, so I explained that it wasn’t knitting but quilting and I explained the concept of a charm quilt.
And then I got into a conversation with her.
Comment by: Rebecca
1 02/13/08 3:17 PM | Comment Link |I always love it when you think my experiences are worth sharing. Thanks, Helen.
Comment by: Julie Marie
2 02/13/08 9:19 PM | Comment Link |I followed the link to Rebeccas blog. Nice post, Rebecca. I am trying to not just be nicer, but have a generally nicer outlook towards people at work who loudly “Praise God” but then spend 3 hours per day doing church work rather than company work. I want to snap at them and say “just how does this square with thou shalt not steal?” but thus far I have not.
Comment by: joe
3 02/14/08 6:34 AM | Comment Link |Seems to me there is a good chance you’d understand more about God quilting than reading pointless flyers.
Craft for Jesus, you know it makes sense.
Comment by: Eliza
4 02/14/08 8:24 PM | Comment Link |Rebecca, I enjoyed your essay about this encounter, and commend you for showing this young woman such grace. I would have avoided her as best I could, or been brief & brusque, to end the conversation before it could get to the “have you been saved” part…
Comment by: Rebecca
5 02/18/08 7:59 PM | Comment Link |Thanks for your comments, all. Joe, you have made my day. Craft for Jesus. Awesome.