Wednesday, July 31, 2002 8:11 AM

Acceptance

The following letter from Fred King who currently lives in Spain is a response to the last forum mailing (July 28) titled, ‘Evangelizing TLIG’. He is now in Romania helping Mariana Danescu who left her home in Canada for a few months to try to set up a Beth Myriam in her homeland. She is encountering many difficulties so please remember her and Fred in your prayers.

The special message – Evangelizing TLIG – was received this morning and came just as I am packing for my trip to Romania and so it held a special meaning for me. Why? Because tomorrow afternoon I leave by bus for Madrid and then on tuesday morning I fly to Bucharest. What happens after that I have no idea whatsoever. I leave this entirely in His Hands.

Your correspondent says he wanted to try to convert people to TLIG but often times he wasn’t successful. But now he undersrands that he has to go to the “other side of the boat”.

Many of us can’t get away to work in other countries, yet we can do so much in our own community. Living the life of Christ is more difficult than evangelizing TLIG, because we are not just giving lip-service but actually DOING something. When Jesus said: “By their fruits you will know them”, He really spoke a lot of horse-sense. It’s not how much we evangelize that counts, Jesus tells Vassula, but we will be judeged on how much love we give to those around us.

Sometimes I think that too often we do try to “convert” others, thus getting in the way of how Christ wants to work. His ways are not our ways, as He so often told Vassula; we just have to be content in being the mouthpiece or even the “dish-rag” for Him.

This means then that we must love those who are marginalised, those who who are hungry, those who are orphaned or abandoned, etc. But will we let a prostitute or beggar into our house? What is more, is there peace in our home, rather than the blaring of music or the continuous yapping of someone on TV? Do we help the immigrant to learn our language? Would we let a homeless person actually stay in our house? Do we really want to use our precious time to write to a person in prison? This is what Jesus is saying to us when He talks about Love.

When we do evangelize, let us not do this with the idea of “converting people to TLIG.” Rather, let us be the mouthpiece of the Lord and let Him work the way He pleases. Maybe we don’t see the fruits of our labor; that could be one of the crosses that He offers us to bear. Loving our neighbour as ourselves means a lot more than we realize. It means sharing our knowledge, sharing our expertise, sharing our experiences, sharing the most valuable commodity we have at this moment: our precious time. We ought to also share all that He has given us: our wages, our homes, our comforts, our very lives.

Often I think that the most important word in the dictionary is Acceptance. We must learn to accept the person that we are, whether we are short and fat or tall, dark and gruesome. It also means accepting all that happens each day without complaining. In Ireland there is a very good expression: “When you get a lemon, you make lemonade.” And if we praise God and thank Him each day for what He is giving us, we then find ourselves feeling happy in our lives. Those around you see this immediately – and this is also a form of evangelizing.

Pray for me that I will be His channel for the street-children of Bucharest, that they will find Christ and love Him now and forever.

Fred King