We were at Scienceworks (Melbourne) enjoying our day as a family together on Tuesday 26th April 2011. I sat down to have a coffee while my daughter was in a workshop and I had to remain close by …
A mum with a baby in a sling, another in a pusher, and yet another eating chips came and sat by me. I had seen her earlier. I had tried to speak to her toddler and she had said to me that he could not understand because he only spoke Serbian …
She sat and I commented that she had her hands full … she said she had two more in the same workshop as my daughter. We got chatting … she had been in Australia for 9 years. She had an 8 year old and so had been pregnant or with young children from the time she had first arrived here. When she had her first two children she had been running a successful and growing baby sling business and had her 2 children in care, when, as she told me, she suddenly wondered why … she decided that being a Mum was more important than having her kids in care and making her business work … she wanted to be the one to raise her children …
I later found out that she not only took care of 5 young children, but also kept ducks, chickens, had a vegetable patch and baked bread three times a day for her young family.
She mentioned that she had done something associated with Easter for “religious” reasons … I asked a few questions later in the conversation and it turned out she was a Serbian Orthodox Christian and had been fasting up to Easter. I asked a few questions and she noted that I seemed to know something about Christianity (fasting etc not much). I told her I was a Christian … she asked what type … I replied a Bible believing, miracle believing, God that heals believing Christian … I told her how greatly I respected the Orthodox churches’ view of Communion in particular – how they retained value for it and recognition of the power in it … she agreed.
I looked at her as she spoke of her young family and told me about the challenges she had with the education system because she had bright children and how she was trying to comprehend the Australian “tall poppy syndrome”. I said to her that I believed that the syndrome was dying, but that it could be a challenge in our community …
I then felt to pray, feeling the compassion of God rest on me. I asked if I could and she agreed. Me a “new Christian” standing together with a representative of the orthodox Church – both women who loved God, and who were just as passionate about their children and their faith … although it was being outworked in different ways.
I placed my hand on her arm and asked the Holy Spirit to come. I prayed for her destiny to be open and for whatever had been blocking her to shift in the name of Jesus. I looked at her and said that she was an agent of change … she nodded. I asked if she wanted the gift of healing … she said “yes” and so in faith, through the laying on of hands, I gave it to her, and told her she would lay her hands on her children and see them healed, and she would see others she prayed for healed. I was a little overwhelmed by the compassion of God for her and I got teary, and as I did she did too … two Mums from different cultures, from different sides of the world, standing together in Scienceworks, watching Godworks in action …
I finished praying for her and she gathered her children.
I trust things shift for her. I prayed favour for her with God and mankind, and I trust that will be outworked in her life.
I may not know the impact of my prayers in this life; but, yet, as I think of her I smile … I am truly delighted in how God unites, unifies … as Paul says in Ephesians:
… “there is one body and one Spirit … one Lord one hope one baptism; one God and father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).
because the goal is unity … well I think it is anyway …
…“unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:13).
We come together united in the Spirit … we may not always agree , but we can be united even so … this amazing woman, wife and mother of five and I found a common ground, regardless of our diverse backgrounds and experience …
I have great respect for her, for I caught a glimpse of how God sees her, how she is created for greatness … and I stand back in awe of a good God, a God that loves us all … if we can just stand unified in spirit and see one another as God sees us then we will become one body, with Christ as the head, and the world will shine with His glory for …
God is Good!