Psalm 33

Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.

For the word of the Lord is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.
The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he puts the deep into storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the people of the world revere him.
For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people he chose for his inheritance.
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind;
from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth
he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.
No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength.
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.

We wait in hope for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in you.

This is such a beautiful Psalm.

It starts out by telling us that we need to worship Lord. We need to praise Him in song, joyfully and skillfully, as He deserves the best we have to offer. But why this praise? The psalm goes on to tell us why; For He is righteous and just. And as if that weren’t enough the psalm keeps on going and tells us about His greatness. By a word He made the heavens. He made the entire cosmos by uttering a word. The stars, these great balls of intense fire, were made by His breath. The oceans that we see and feel so small before, He simply puts them into jars. We are to revere this great God of ours! For He spoke and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm. What power is there in this one sentence? He uttered a word and it came into existence, He ordered and it stood firm. What a great God we serve! He makes void the plans of the nations - in light of the financial crisis we are facing these days, I believe it comes from Him, as His plans stand firm for ever. We have strayed so far from Him and His love, that I believe this is one of His last attempts to bring the whole world back to His thrown, before He comes back. He calls the nation blessed that follows Him - today what nation follows Him? What nation is wholly given to Him and His purposes? I think it is safe to say; none. But the Lord is watching us, He knows us inside out as He made our hearts. He loves us so much that He considers everything that we do. No matter what man does to resist, not even a king with his army can resist what the Lord has ordained. God’s eyes are on us who fear Him and hope in His unfailing love. He will deliver us from death and keep us alive during famines.
In light of who God is, this intense being that created everything that we know, that loves us enough to create us, to sustain us, to die for us, what else can we do but to cry out to Him and say that:

We wait in hope for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in you.

AMEN!

New Life

On Thursday night I went out with a ministry called New Life, whose work is amongst the prostitutes and transvestites of Athens. It was an interesting evening to say the least. Our night started at 22:30 down at New Life’s office, in the shady part of down town Athens, Omonia. We started with some orientation as we, Sarah Wheway, our friend Ioanna and myself, had never done this before. There we had a chance to learn a little bit more about the trafficking trade of Greece and the women involved. I was shocked to learn what I did. The women are told upon arrival that when they’ve earned 50-60.000€ they’ll be released. To my great surprise the pimps and madams actually do release them. Most women though, upon release, keep selling themselves. They’re logic is that since they’re bodies were sold for somebody else it might as well be sold for their own benefit. Upon being asked if they would have known then, i.e. prior to coming, what they knew now, would they still have come? Their answer is invariably yes. They’re situation here, although not the greatest, is still far better than what they had back home, and so they would still have come. I couldn’t believe my ears. If prostitution is better than home, how bad is home? Coming from my little bubble of protected Europe I can’t even begin to imagine what these women have gone through. The longer I work with the mercy ministries the more I realize that we in the West are the privileged few. After orientation we were told that, since it was Thursday, we would not be going to the prostitutes, as on these nights they minister to the transvestites. We had a time of prayer and worship, to prepare our hearts for what was to come and then we were split into three teams. I was glad to hear that my team was being sent to Sygrou Avenue. Now Sygrou is an avenue that I travel through every day on my way to the office. My eyes have been opened to how dark that place is as on every block there is a strip club. The Lord placed it on my heart, a year and a half ago, to pray for this place, which I do every time I travel through it. Part of my prayer has been “Lord, if it is Your will, use me directly to minister to these women” well, to my great joy, my prayer was answered... sort of. I had an opportunity to minister to those who walk that street but they were not women, they were men dressed as women, transvestites. We drove down the avenue and when we located one or two guys, we drove a little farther down and parked. Then two out of the group, typically women, went out to these guys with coffee & tea to talk to them, while the rest of us stayed back in the car and prayed for the encounter. By the way, in each team there is always one man for security purposes, in case things get heated. So at any given time there are two ladies talking to the guys, with at least two people praying for them in the car. To my surprise, quite a few of these men are Greeks who do this by choice. One man we encountered, who has been a friend of the ministry for three years now, supports his family this way. He has a wife and a daughter and, as far as I can tell, leads a regular life by day, although he doesn’t have a 9-5 job. Still now I can hardly believe it. What baffled me also was the amount of men that solicit their services! I will never understand this world.

Was I shocked to see what I did? I wasn’t as shocked as I could, or even should have been. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve been habituated to this world by TV and movies, but the site of a man dressed as a woman didn’t shock or repulse me. I just felt a great swell of pity for them. It must be terrible to be so unsatisfied with oneself that one feels the need to dress up as the opposite sex and even to go to such lengths as to have an operation to become that opposite sex.

Well, all we can do is pray for them and continue to develop those relationships that hopefully will lead them to Christ. It was an eye opening experience for me and I sincerely hope that I’ll be able to go back and minister to these men again.