Why I love and serve my God . . .

This year has been one of such growth for me in so many ways. God has been working on my heart opening my eyes to the differences of aligning myself with people of faith and actually following Him. I am called to do more than just sit in a pew on the weekends, or write a monthly check, or throw up some half-hearted, pious sounding prayers and platitudes . . . I am called to serve.

And it hurts. It pinches my toes like my heels did last night after wearing them for 14 hours. It keeps me up late at night working on the computer. It gives me headaches and and makes me sweat buckets in a hot kitchen, but it also gives me the prickly tears behind my eyes as I think, "I could do this all day, every day Lord when you show up like this."

Last night I was part of a unique and wonderful event at our church. Our church is a multi-ethnic church with Korean, Hispanic, Chinese and East Indian fellowships that are all a part of our church body (not just renting our facility). And yet, we support each group's needs by having separate meeting times as well as corporate services. The problem? Many of us tend to stay in the comfort of our own ethnic fellowships (including anglos) and we don't get a chance to really connect with others.

A dear Korean sister came to me with an idea last spring for an event specifically designed to bring the cultures together. Last night we had our first "Celebrate Culture!" event. We designed it to highlight one of our ethnic fellowships each month and learn about the culture, history, language and traditions of that culture. We hoped we could get about 50 women interested in attending.

We had over 100 women sign up for the event! Each table of 8 women had representatives from at least 3 different ethnicities. I could not stop crying as we set the room with beautiful artifacts and my Korean sisters (many whom I met for the first time last night) were dressed in their traditional costumes. Women cooked all evening long so we could all sample at least 5 different Korean dishes. We practiced greetings in Korean and learned to say "thank you". At the end of the evening, one of our sisters from the East Indian Fellowship invited women back next month to celebrate the culture of India.

The night was an incredible picture of God's grace and goodness and love. Like a love letter written just to me, the evening went just as I envisioned. Women connected with other women outside their own culture sharing experiences and celebrating the culture of a significant group of our church family. All the women were incredibly supportive and I can not believe how good it felt to be in a room like that. I told God all night long, "God - this is you. This is you here. This is what it should be like every day."

I'm hoping that all who attended felt the same way.