Two Unexpected Things on Sunday

How often do you feel ready for the unexpected things?

My answer is 'rarely' or even 'never' because I don't ever expect for bad things, and moreover who wants to expect for bad things??
None.

However, there are two unexpected things that have made me a little bit shocked today. The first thing happened in Sunday school. Today I got the chance to teach the children who live across the river. I and my friends went there after church. We were very glad for the kids were very enthusiastic as seen from the number of students who attended. When I was leading the songs I saw a new face sitting there. I haven't seen her before so I thought that she was a new comer. The other kids know her because she lives nearby the house where our Sunday school takes place. After we sang and prayed, we grouped the students according to their age and started to teach. I was just gonna start my class with the fourth grader when I heard a noise behind me. There was a man, with no t-shirt yelled a name while looking inside the house. He looked very angry and took a kind of root or a short stick as though he was ready to hit somebody. A few minutes later the girl whose name was yelled came out and ran very quickly. The only thing I could do is staring at them because it never happened before. I was confused and tried to take a breath to calm down myself and then I looked at my students. They seemed to know that I needed explanation so one student said 'her dad doesn't want her to come to Sunday school. He will be angry.' I asked them why and later I knew that the little girl isn't from protestant church, she is a Roman Catholic.

I kept thinking, trying to find a sensible reason why her dad forbids her coming to Sunday school. We are not teaching a false story about Jesus that the Roman Catholic worship, we don't baptize people, we don't ask his girl to move to protestant church-- NO-- we just share the GOSPEL to her and if he found that the Gospel that we shared endangered his girl then I have nothing to say. I am speechless for I have just seen an exaggerate fanaticism. I was very sad for this fact. Well, I don't have right to judge people but by looking back at the truth I don't think that her dad has done a right thing. There's no use of differentiating churches as long as they don't teach you falsely. I can only pray that the girl could have access to come to the truth as nothing can ever bound the truth. One day the truth will set the girl's family free.

My neighbor house after the accident (taken from Pos Kupang 21 Mei 2012)

The second unexpected thing is the disaster happened to my neighbor. Her house and rent rooms were all burnt out. Nothing was left. It happened very fast so when the firefighter came, they could only save some stuff and the neighbor's houses which are close to the source of fire. It was very tragic and traumatic. I can never imagine how hard it is for the victim. I was hoping that it was just a dream. I believe the victim would also wish the same but we can never control everything, we can only avoid. I am praying that it will never happen again in our environment as our houses are very close to each other.

But what I love from this disaster is when God taught me and my Sunday school students to pray for the victims. I believe there's no coincidence in this world. When the accident happened, I was teaching my kids about prayer so when we saw the dark smoke in the sky and people screamed 'fire..fire..' I know it was Holy Spirit who asked me to pray with my kids. We were hand in hand and prayed that there were no dead and we prayed for the firefighters. It was a very meaningful lesson for me and also for my students. We didn't only learn the theory but we also got the chance to directly pray for the victims.

Then, I was contemplating at night that even I am not always ready for the worst, I can always trust God for the worst or the best. No matter what happen, God is always in control.
May God comfort my neighbor and strengthen her to keep trusting in the Lord.