Saturday, June 10, 2000
Saturday, June 10, 2000
We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of
God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's
word, which is also at work in you believers.
A month later the voice of God was back, "Go down to the harbor tonight." An elderly couple
lived next to her, so she went and told them about the voice. The elderly gentleman agreed to go
with her to the dock that night.
They found themselves on a ship with intoxication crewmen. "Soon I found myself talking as
rapidly about God as my English permitted, and how I had found a new life when I turned to Him
for forgiveness," Ingrid recounts. A sound startled her from behind. In the doorway stood a tall
middle-aged man, holding an empty bottle.
He had been listening to her. "Ten dirty years have gone since I ran away from God," he told her.
Suddenly everyone was silent as this man told about how his life fell apart as a result of his
drinking. He once attended church and had a family but lost everything due to alcohol. Ingrid
started praying for guidance and then invited this stranger to church with her. "Will you come
with me?" she asked him, "I will pick you up at eight o'clock." She didn't know if she did the
right thing or not inviting this man to go to church with her. When she went to the dock, though,
he was waiting. This time he was clean-shaven and wearing clean clothes. Together they went to
church. After the service she asked if he would like to pray with her and some of the others in
another part of the church. The man said he did. When this stranger got up from kneeling, "you
could almost sense the inner light radiating from him and you could sense his new peace of soul."
Through Ingrid, God's word became flesh.
(1 Thessalonians 2:13
NRSV)
At church one evening in her hometown in Sweden, Ingrid Widdell heard a voice. At first she
tried to ignore the voice by concentrating harder on the worship service, but the voice kept
speaking to her, "Go down to the harbor!" She tried to dismiss this notion by telling herself that
the harbor was in the roughest part of town.
Dear God, help me today to become an open Bible. Amen.
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