It is 1:30 AM and our bus stops at a petrol station somewhere between Romania and Moldova. The bus is sticky, smothering hot, the bathroom does not work and the seats are cramped. Really cramped. The ‘I can’t sleep but I’m desperate to,’ kind of cramped. The roads swirly zig zag like a scene from your favorite fairytales. Only this does not feel like a fairytale.
When we pull into the station, 13 TNU students, 2 professors, a passel of Sunbergs, and some Central Europeans tumble into the fresh air.
We almost missed the little boy trying to board the bus. While everybody else is seeking fresh air, he was working his way into the stale innards. Hoping for what? And, I watched Curtis and Jay stand guard at the door, good-naturedly but firmly blocking his entrance. I heard that they gave him the last of our chicken salad sandwiches and chips. Maybe tonight he will sleep with a full belly.
My mother’s heart wonders how a 13 year old finds himself counting stars in a midnight sky. Where is his mom? How long since he ate? Where does he sleep?
Quite frankly, he is one of the forgotten. The chances are slim that Compassionate Ministry donations will ever reach his reality. And for a missionary who believes that the kingdom is breaking in today, who believes that we carry the very image of God to a desperate world to fill their needs today, I am stuck. I am at a loss for words and answers. Because, if the kingdom is more than chicken salad sandwiches, and I believe that it is, I fail to connect the kingdom dots tonight.
But, I do believe. I believe in the power of an ancient prayer that goes something like this :
Our Father who is in heaven.
Glory to your name.
Let your kingdom come.
Let your will be done both on earth and in heaven.
And fill our needs today.
Forgive us and help us to forgive those that harm us.
Don’t let us be tempted beyond our endurance but deliver us from every evil.
For it is your kingdom, your power and your glory.
Let it be so.
Somehow, when my heart recites that precious creed, not only with my world in mind, but also with that of a little boy at a bus stop, there is new meaning – new depths.
I don’t have very many answers here in the black night of Eastern Romania. I don’t have a theology that explains how chicken salad brings a kingdom. But, I have a faith that says the kingdom came tonight in the life of a little man whose hope was tied up in a midnight snack.
As our big bus pulled away, I glanced back at the boy and I think I caught a glimpse of Lazarus.
He was dancing.
teanna sunberg 