God surprises us...

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet isready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ ¹⁰ So the servants went out into the streets and gatheredall the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the weddinghall was filled with guests.” (Matt 22:8-9)

These verses sum up my experience last Saturday, 24 September, as we prepared for our meeting with the youth. In these past weeks, we had been befriending several youths in our neighbourhood. They expressed a desire to know more about God, and their faith and wanted to meet together. It was agreed with them that we would meet together on Saturday afternoon. As the time neared, the ‘bleep’ of the cellphone message alert went off. True enough, it was an apology that said that she could not make it as she had a choir practice! But still there are the others who had agreed to come.

At the appointed hour, still there was no one! We were ready to start but walang tao (nobody in tagalog). So how? No problem. God is always present and we can always worship Him. Our team began to pray and worship. As we prayed, this scripture came to mind and some felt that we should go out to the streets and invite any youth that are there. We did.

Praising the Lord

God is indeed the God of surprises! He surprised us by inviting 9 young men. These young men were hanging around outside, playing, not knowing what to do. They were excited to come, though as you can see from the photos, some of them were younger boys. The younger boys followed their older brothers and friends as they did not want to be left out!

Praying together

We had an afternoon filled with laughter, prayers, games, praise, action songs and short sharing. A small beginning of something new for the youth – the older boys want to meet again and this time,they will bring their peer friends.

Sharing and sowing of seeds

My reflection on this – often times, we plan and prepare for something, and it does not quite work the way we expected. We put in the effort and work. Our temptation would be to give up and cancel the afternoon, yet God had a different plan and worked it for his purposes. It was my first experience of seeing boys coming together, having fun and open to learn and share on their faith. At the end of the afternoon, my heart rejoiced as I believe that the Lord was touching these young hearts, and sowing his seeds of faith!


Be faithful and do not give up even when things are not quite turning out as they should or what we would like. Trust in the Lord,and let him work his ways for ‘his ways are not our ways’ (Isaiah 55:8), they are much higher.

Thank you, Lord that it is a privilege always to serve you. It is never boring and always full of surprises! Thank you to my community, J, D and G for the way you desire to follow and serve the Lord.