A Strand in a Tapestry

Sundays are always great here. I am assured of two consistent staples: delicious brunch at the Stewarts', and a great afternoon church service. By the end of the week here, I really crave worship and the teaching of the Word. This Sunday, we had a long, beautiful reading of Anglican liturgical prayers before the sermon. After church, pretty much the whole congregation goes out to have dinner every Sunday at a nice outdoor garden where they sell really tasty, fresh cooked sausages for about two dollars. Sausage is definitely the fast food of choice here....kind of the Czech equivalent to American hotdogs or hamburgers. Wherever you order them in the city, you typically get a gigantic sausage (probably three times the size of an American hotdog), along with two small pieces of wheat bread (no buns), and some yummy mustard sauce to dip your sausage in (no one uses ketchup, and if you do want ketchup, you have to pay extra).

p.s. - that picture is not our church...but it's pretty awesome.

Sunday was also great because of time with new friends. Our Czech teacher ate brunch with us, and told us stories of her childhood living in a Communist country....of how the ability to buy basic things like food and books were so limited, and all their travel was very restricted. They grew up learning Russian and being taught about how amazing Russia was, while being taught that America was the enemy. I often forget how recently Communism ended here, so it was sobering to understand that a woman not much older than all of us grew up under Communist restrictions. She also took us out for a long walk in a Prague park, which was beautiful. The city is great, but I need some nature every now and then!

After church and dinner, most of the interns went with a couple of Czech girls we met at church to Sir Toby's, a beautiful hostel in the city. Hostels are great places to meet people, because so many people are traveling through and are interested in talking to new people. We went down to the hostel pub to try to meet people in the crowd watching the soccer game (“futbol” is huge here). We ended up sitting down beside two nice English speaking guys in their late twenties, one from Canada and one from America (Raleigh, NC, surprisingly!) Both guys had quit their jobs back home and had been traveling (separately) around Europe for months. They regaled us with amazing tales of their adventures in Amsterdam, Switzerland, Egypt, Istanbul, Croatia, Germany, France...the list goes on and on. I decided that when I go back to the States, I should probably find a job that makes tons of money, then quit and travel around the world. Sounds like a great career path to me...yep, my life calling, it's decided. Just kidding, but let me tell you what, being here definitely makes me wish I could travel more.

It's difficult meeting lots of people like these two random guys tonight, knowing you will probably never see them again, and hoping that your one interaction was somehow meaningful in their life. I've always been scared to care about people wholeheartedly and then watch them slip out of my life. In watching my college friends move on this year, I wondered how big of a difference those couple of years would make in our lives in the long run, and I'll always remember what my friend Paul told me: that every friendship, every opportunity to show love, every opportunity to learn something new from someone else is important, no matter how brief and temporary. What a shame it would be to never start a conversation with someone you might only see once, simply because you knew there could be no lasting friendship to come out of it. What a shame to never invest in a person's life, just because that friendship might only last a couple of hours, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years. What a shame to never care deeply because you are afraid of the pain of letting go. All things go, all things die, new things are born in the shadow of what has passed away- this is the consistent ebb and flow of joy and sorrow in all of nature. In the grand scheme of eternity, I am a strand that is woven into the tapestry of someone else's life, and my brief engagement in their life experience can be a small, integral part of a larger picture I'll never see here. Every person is valuable, every person is made in the image of an incredible God, every person reveals to me a different facet of His glory....and I never want to miss that in anyone.