A consistently overflowing crowd greeted us yesterday after crossing over to Meycauayan, Bulacan, straight to its central market where the holiday traffic gave us slow moving souls hurrying to be home by nightfall. We stood at the merging of two great intersections and on a platform perfectly seen by everyone coming from all directions. We asked permission from two Muslim women who were selling their wares on the side. We stood in between them. One was obviously resistant, The other, accommodating.
Visible reactions from the crowd. The enforcers stopped to listen and for a moment I thought they were going to come to us to tell us to step down. Occupants from the establishments came out to sit by their door. Motorists parked on the side and sat. People crossed the street to ask for tracts, Judgement was proclaimed to the religious. The gospel was on display.
We walked towards the second smaller intersection where the crowd was double the previous location. I believe this would have been a larger crowd had we been here that morning. My brother Jordan lifted the gospel here. Jhet stayed close for security. E**** lifted the cross. I guarded them from behind.
We finished by the time the sun set. And not one soul visibly heard us. In this labor it is hard to miss realizing how dead people really are. They are oblivious and apathetic to the gospel. These here surely have eyes and ears, yet not one response. Such are dead lifeless bones.
There is a sobering hopelessness that settles over the soul when we proclaim the Gospel. We are acutely aware that in ourselves, we can do nothing; we could stand for days on end until our strength failed, and not one soul would respond by the power of our own persuasion. In our context, we often face a wall of human pride that cares little for eternal things—a culture where many would sooner perish than suffer the perceived embarrassment of a public turning to God. This is not to say that we have lacked the Lord’s favor in our labors, yet His words regarding the "few" ring with a piercing truth.
It is only when God Himself performs the miraculous work of regeneration that men finally awaken to the gravity of their plight. Until that moment of divine intervention, we remain mere watchmen, simply lending the Lord our person so that His voice might be heard across the crowded square. In this sacred task, there is absolutely nothing to our credit. We accomplish nothing for our own names, but rather find in the work a necessary and daily purging of our own flesh. The privilege of this duty was not earned, but was graciously dispensed to us, a mercy that allows us to accept whatever comes for the sake of His glory alone.
First, third and last photo courtesy of Jhet.
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