Thursday, June 02, 2005

Blessing others on accident

Sometimes Christ's love shines through me in spite of me. Last night was one of those times.

Duane (another American) and I teach a spoken English class at the university together. Since there are only six students in it we decided it'd be nice to have them over for an end of the year meal. I didn't think much of it since Amanda and I had done the same thing in Eureka for a couple of classes. But I guess it did mean something to them.

After the simple meal of local food, one of the students stood up to present us each with a gift from the class. What they gave us didn't matter; what he said did:

The night before Christ died, he invited his friends to share meal with him. This was the
most intimate connection he could offer them. Thank you for inviting us into your home.

I hadn't thought about the fact that most of these students had never been invited into a teacher's home before. None had ever been invited to the home of a forengi before. I didn't think it was going to be meaningfull or significant or important in any way. Now I wish I had invited them earlier.

I thought it was just a meal. To them it was a blessing.

3 comments:

Josh said...

First Off, Nice Post.

Second, Let me get this right.. Americans or perhaps any foreign person is called a "forengi"?

If that is right that's really funny to me. Think Star Trek aliens. (Ferengis were the money hungry mechant aliens, I think.) Which is in itself interesting. I suppose forengis are sometimes the same way there.

Jonathan said...

Yep. I think it may be stolen from the Italians but essentially any white person is either "Italiano" or ferengi. Amanda and I aren't good enough trekkies to know how many other words in local language are Roddenbery's.

I may have mentioned the word in my "Onomatopoeia No More" blog.

One other one "gulla gulla" translates to "yada yada." Glad to see Seinfeld has had an impact here too.

shawanda said...

"The night before Christ died, he invited his friends to share meal with him. This was the most intimate connection he could offer them. Thank you for inviting us into your home."

This might be one of the most beautiful things I've heard in a long time. It just says soo much to me.