April Fool & May Day

April fool? No, I don't have a "tall tale" to tell and it's almost May Day instead of April Fool's Day. Even so, April 2010 was interesting to say the least. From the final week of March until yesterday we had a Japanese guest for an entire month, a professing Christian that I (Jon) have know for about 32 years. He came, much like once before, about six years ago, suicidal, broke, and on the run from his company to whom he owed several thousand dollars. I spend many hours counseling him, helping clear up things with his company, taking him to the employment office to look for a new job, and (best of all, perhaps) taking him to a good church and for additional counseling with a Japanese pastor to look for a new life.

There were various blessings in this, especially in the times spent in the Word and at church. A new "relational" Bible study / biblical counseling method was even discovered as I used the Book of Philemon in one of our best sessions together. (I'll undoubtedly share more on this later.) And as the month came to an end I drove Mr. Y and his things back "home" in southern Japan (11 hours each way by "interstate") so that he can look for a job there and hopefully renew fellowship with missionaries and a church in that area.

So why did I title this article "April Fool"? Wasn't April a wonderful month of ministry in every way? Wasn't Mr. Y's extended visit like a robin on the lawn announcing the coming of spring? No, sadly it and he were not! April 2010 was a tremendous struggle, exhausting and exasperating, promising occasionally and discouraging often. Much counsel and practical help was given. But the bottom line (as of yesterday) is that Mr. Y. left far more critical and bitter about the additional practical (financial) help that he wanted and we were not able to give, than thankful for the practical and spiritual help that we, along with others, were able to give. (He did not leave penny-less!)

Were we April fools for trying to help (by God's grace) change Mr. Y's destructive and long-standing lifestyle or is he, himself, still sadly an April fool as we enter the month of May? Humanly, speaking, it appears (so far) that both we and he were and are April fools. Even so, to echo a famous missionary line from the 1950's, my main thought is that "He is no fool who gives to God what he can not keep (his April or whatever month you may name) in order to keep that which he can not loose (God's grace and blessing: present and future)."

April may be ending on this gloomy note with us still as "fools," but God knows and (best of all) He's still at work. Hey, isn't that what May Day is all about? You thought it was a worker's holiday? No, May Day is really another day (and another month!) for God to work! And we know He will.