"i walk by here everyday"

Gotta tell you a story from the revival last week…

Like I mentioned earlier, we had 5 church services in 4 days, aimed at reviving the local church. For a church as small as Mayfair, it was a bit of a struggle.

We sometimes only have 40 people in a service, so to hope that we could find enough people to fill the seats for 5 straight days was a bit of a concern. And not that numbers matter, but we wanted the Canadian ministers to feel as if their time was wisely used.

Anyway, we had a couple of services at the beginning with large crowds, but they thinned out considerably on the weeknights.

Then, on Wednesday, God reminded us that He will draw in who He desires.

Stef and I were hanging out with David E White, our new favorite Canadian and a very talented singer/songwriter. He had finished giving me another little guitar lesson and Stef asked him to just play with her for awhile. So she sat and played piano while he played his guitar. They sang together and just enjoyed having time to be artists in God’s presence.

What was very simply a neat moment, a restorative moment of praise for Stef’s heart, quickly became much more.

We noticed a man sitting in the back row of the church, just listening. Eventually, he came to the front of the church and asked if David was the pastor. No, just a Canadian... The man looked for the words to speak what his heart was feeling.

Then he said it: “I was walking home. I walk by here everyday and I've never thought to stop. And today, I heard the most beautiful noise coming from this place. I asked someone inside where the voice was coming from. They pointed me in here. And I just had to hear this voice and this guitar…they’re beautiful.”

Stef and David explained that they would be playing more that night as part of the revival. They invited him. He looked excited, and told them that he would first have to run home to shower. He said he had to be presentable. Then he said that he had two friends that he had to go see – he said that they needed to come to the service as well.

He left. Stef and David simply smiled at each other. Wow.

Later that night the man, Schubert, came back with one of his friends.

We may never know exactly why he was drawn to sit in church that night. But we will never forget how he came to sit there.

God continues to amaze us.