Today was pretty sweet; both in the literal and figurative sense. Literally, I got to eat an amazingly delicious, yet disgustingly fattening (but oh so delicious) paczki. If you know what that is, I promise I won’t make a cheesy spiritual connection about getting ‘spiritually fat.’ If you don’t know what that is, it’s a Polish, doughnut-like, filled pastry. They can contain all kinds of fun stuff like custard, or raspberry filling, or custard, or apple-cinnamon, or lemon, or custard, or plum… or who knows what? My favorite are probably the custards ones. And for those of us who have a hard time trying to pronounce words with ‘c’s and ‘z’s that are way too friendly, just muddle together the two words ‘punch’ and ‘key’. Say it mashed together with confidence, and if someone asks about it just pretend you had to yawn or cough or something.
Figuratively, today was even sweeter because I had the awesome opportunity to converse with a man named Alphonso while waiting in the line that makes paczki dreams come true. Alphonso, Austin and I talked for what must have been about an hour or so. We talked a lot about his life and history. At first, I was a little discouraged because we went to Hamtramck to love on people, and look for ministry opportunities; yet, it was pretty hard to direct the conversation because Alphonso was a talker. In fact, I hardly got any words at all. Luckily, I realized something important: Sometimes, the best ministry isn’t doing the talking, but simply just quieting yourself and listening to the other person. Some people just need someone to care. There have been times where I simplylet a person talk, and once they voiced their situation, they realized how ridiculous their perspective was. They walked away thanking me, yet I hadn’t said a word!
God is so gracious. He lets us do the talking a lot of the time. But I still want to be quite sometimes and know that he is God. I want to hear his voice and receive his wisdom. For now, I’m alright with doing the listening. But when I do speak, I want the name of Jesus to come out.
Learning to listen,
Zachary.
That’s good stuff right there!