The Water Proof Bible

Goodness! I've drafted so many potential blogs in the last week, but I've been too distracted by everything else to finish them. Maybs I'll dig them out sometime. 

It is 6:50am and I am already an hour into my work day. :)  Fortunately for me, the kids are still sleeping and the house is quite peaceful. Give it 10 or 20 minutes and that will change.

As I write this, my heart is simply BURSTING with joy and delight over how amazing God has been and how blessed I am to be called His. He uses me when I least expect it!

I could tell you bunches of stories of God's goodness from this last week alone, but the ones that have my heart dancing are from yesterday.

My friend, Amanda, and I have gone to Sugar Bottom beach together two or three times this summer and have quite enjoyed our deep conversations about Jesus as we soak up the warmth of the sun whilst sitting in the water. Things have been crazy hectic for a while and we've been trying to find a time to go back there. A week ago Tuesday, after a lovely week with my parents for the 4th,  I arrived back in Iowa City around 3:30pm. Amanda and I decided upon my return that a trip to the beach was in order. 

I got to my house, unpacked some things from my van and reached my front door at about the same time Amanda did. I changed, grabbed my water proof Bibles (partly to justify going to the beach, partly to actually do some reading and discussing if we wanted) and we were off. 
As we turned off the exit for North Lib, Amanda's car was making rather a funny sound and, since I had JUST had my water pump replaced and knew the location of such an object I suggested that maybe it was an issue with the water pump (What do I know?)

A few stop lights later we heard a "KA CHUNK" and then the sound stopped. And..then the air conditioning stopped. I was like, "hmm... maybe serpentine belt?" And then the battery light came on. So I was thinking, "I'm pretty sure your serpentine belt is gone" and she was like, "What do I do??" and at that moment we saw a sign for an auto center and we made a quick turn to pull in there. WELL..almost quick, the power steering was gone at that point too. 

We got out and I looked under the hood and, sure enough, the serpentine belt was shredded. A nice mechanic man came out and looked and told us that a loose water pump and interfered with the serpentine belt and caused the lock up and snap. (I know more about cars than I thought!) 

We were stranded and I didn't have my phone so the only North Liberty contact I knew was my sister, who wouldn't be off work til 5. Seeing that we didn't want to tote around bibles and such whilst we wondered the streets of North Liberty in the sweltering heat, those were left in the car as we explored to find some A/C whilst waiting for Pearl to get off work and rescue us.

Fast forward a week to Monday. Moving day! It was hot and we were exhausted and we considered at the end of the day that jumping in the lake would be an excellent idea. Seeing as we still had a lot of loading/unloading to do by the end of the day, it didn't happen. 

Thursday! (Yesterday) I had a day off, and had been unpacking boxes and doing a walk through of the new places with my check list and all sorts of I-just-moved-to-a-new-place-and-have-a-lot-to-do kinds of behaviors. When Amanda got off work @ 2:30 it finally worked out. We were gonna take a break from the unpacking and organizing and just relax for the afternoon and get back to everything later. 

We got in the van already to go and I was like , "Oh! The Bibles!" I'm trying to read Romans 8 everyday as per my great-grand father's request and I'm usually better at reading it out loud to my friends whilst I do it myself. Back  in the van and Amanda was like "Oh! Towels" .. we're a little scatter brained at times. 

We got to the beach, finally! And there was a LOT more beach than there was a month ago. My gosh, the lake seems like it went down 10 ft. There weren't that many people there, and given that the roped off area for swimming was a LOT smaller than it has been, we were closer with everyone as well. 

I had the two Bibles in my hand as we waded out in the water and was in up to my waste when I asked Amanda, "Why'd I bring things out here? I should just go put them back on the beach" But the water was rather delightful and I just held them with me anyways. 

I gave Amanda a Bible and we decided we should read Isaiah 61 and thus opened our lovely books, never mind the waves that lapped at the pages. :) It wasn't long before one of the other beach goers, a young man who studies at the University called over to us, "Is that a waterproof book??" we responded back that it was. I told him, "it's actually a Bible. Want to see it?"
"Yeah I do," was his response and he swam over and flipped through the pages. 

He handed it back saying that it was pretty cool and began to swim away. He didn't go far before he turned back and asked us why we were reading it. He wanted to know what our objective was, like if were were in a study group, or searching out different religions or what. We told him we read it because we wanted to and that we believed in Jesus. 

He said he was really curious as to why that was, because he was an Atheist and didn't understand why people choose a religion since all religions generate hate. 

We were then launched into a full on Spiritual discussion for the next 30 or 40 minutes as he asked his questions of curiosity. He claimed that since he studies physics and the Bible can't be proven that it seemed like any one who had their own religion was just someone who was ignorant and used God as a cop out answer to explain how the world came to be. 

(In my mind I was secretly thanking the Lord for all those times my Grandpa Kohl had sat us down after dinner to explain the Bible to us through science)

The guy also claimed that scientists were able to replicate DNA with chemicals in a lab and thus it is proven that chemicals makes nothings into something and the world came from chemicals. Of course I asked if the it was the chemicals coming together by chance in a lab dish or if scientists put them together. "Scientists" he said. 

And I asked him, "do you believe the same thing about buildings? That some materials randomly came together and became a house? Or that a painting was just random chemicals turning into paint and forming a picture on a canvas"

"Well, no. I see where you're going. But if God were real I don't see why all religions would generate so much hate and violence in the world."

Now that I think about it, I wish I would have said that it was more of a lack of people allowing God to be in the world that caused such animosity, but I suppose the Spirit had me say what ever he wanted. 

The conversation went really well and it ended just as pleasantly as it had started. I just pray that we gave him something to think about. 

After that, we decided to sit on the beach as we'd originally planned. setting the Bibles down in the shallow water we debriefed a little on what the Lord had just done and we no sooner had turned our faces toward the glorious rays of the sun when we heard, "are those books water proof?"

I turned to see a man in his late 30s walking towards us. "Yeah, it's a waterproof Bible. Want to see it?" "*curse words removed* no way! Yes I do!"  I picked it up, dipped it in the lake to get the sand off and handed it to him.


"Now who would bring a Bible to the beach??"

"We would I guess"

"Do you know Psalm 23?"

"Of course"

"That's my favorite verse. What's yours?"

"James 1:2-4"

"Where do you go to church?"

"Veritas. It's in Iowa City."

"where are you from?"

"Iowa City"

"I haven't been to church in a while. I don't really have time any more."

"oh yeah?"

"Yeah. But just because I don't go doesn't mean I don't practice."

At this point he started wading in and leaving the conversation. Shortly thereafter a lady came over to us.

"You have a water proof Bible? I've never seen one before."

"You wanna see it?"

"I'd love to!"

As she did her own flipping through it and commenting, a little boy swimming not to far away (maybe it was her kid) got all excited as well exclaiming he'd never heard of such a thing. 

I kind of chuckle to myself remembering all that. It wasn't either of our goals to draw so much attention. I think if we'd have known, we probs wouldn't have brought them. But, it's really all how the Lord works. The people we met at the beach yesterday probably wouldn't have been there when we went a week ago. 


A curious Atheist doesn't happen by chance. They would only be curious is they weren't totally confident that what they believed was right. I mean, he had a lot of well thought out questions and he was really respectful of our responses. I think the Lord wanted him there. I think the Lord wanted us there. 

Driving away from all of that, of course we could do nothing more than praise the Lord for putting us in a place to be used, whether we had expected it or not. 

It'll be fun to see what the Lord does with those seeds that were planted yesterday. I shall ask the Lord about it when I get to heaven and perhaps show me the spiritual battle that took place over our heads that we didn't see. Christ won. I know that. I'm just curious as to what it looked like. 

There's a bubbling sort of joy in the deep places of my heart. I just feel so loved and honored that the Lord would see me fit to share His love with others. I feel honored that I am "good enough" by God's standards. 

*sigh* the children are up now. I think I better go intervene before they start in on early morning sodas and nutella/marshmallow fluff covered cookies for breakfast.