My mission trips to various parts of the world have benefited me as much as it has those to whom I may have had the opportunity to teach. While this country continues its slide into abysmal darkness, our citizens seem oblivious to the darkening clouds on the horizon. The cries for "civil rights," "personal rights," "judicial rights" and "entitlements" seems to be getting louder; either that or my hearing aids are doing their job. Sometimes I think our society has missed what it means to be truly blessed. Let me share with you an incident that occurred some time back on one of my mission trips to Russia. On this particular occasion I had the opportunity to visit one of the coldest cities in the Komi region. Vorkuta lies about 200 miles Northeast of Syktyvkar, just inside the Arctic circle. I was told while there that they were having unusually warm weather; the temperature was around 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). The reason for my visit was to encourage the struggling congregation in that city; a congregation that had been without a preacher for almost ten years. In May of that year Mesha and Lena Derbanov accepted the challenge to move to Vorkuta and help strengthen the church and be about seeking and saving the lost. Mesha is a graduate of the Syktyvkar School of Preaching. He had been one of my students at Syktyvkar and he and his wife took on the challenge to move to this bitterly cold part of the world.
I arrived in Vorkuta on Friday, conducted a number of classes both Friday and Saturday, and taught during the Sunday morning worship service. On Sunday afternoon I was invited to dinner at Mesha and Lena's, and I must say that the meal was fit for a king. I was treated to three kinds of salads, a dish of spaghetti, a side order of cheese and ham slices, topped off with a bowl of fruit salad and ice cream. The custom in Russia is to serve tea after dinner and then sit around and enjoy one another's company, chat and catch up on the latest news. When Lena brought the cups in, I was one of two people who were given a nice mug for my tea, while the other five guests drank out of plastic cups…not at all typical of Russian tea drinking. And as I let my tea bag steep in the hot water that had been poured into my cup I thought to myself, "She only has two cups!"
In my kitchen cupboard back home I have an entire section just above the counter top that is dedicated to holding my mugs and cups that I use for tea and coffee. There are cups from different states, cups with various slogans, cups that are memorabilia of a trip to one place or the other, cups that are old, and cups that are new. I have never counted my cups, but I would guess that I have more than two dozen cups, stacked one on top of the other and both layers pushing the edges of my cabinet. And still I thought, "She has only two cups!"
I sometimes wonder why God has blessed our country with so much abundance. Why has He been patient with us for the last half century during which time we have gone through a sexual revolution, criticized His word, mocked His Son, ridiculed the beautiful body of Christ and done everything we could, as a nation, to kick God out of our lives? I am, first and foremost, a student of the Bible. But I am also a student of history, having majored in that field in college. Our nation is living on borrowed time. The Bible certainly teaches us that nations that forget God will be destroyed; history provides numerous illustrations that prove this to be the case. In spite of all our abundance, it seems that this nation has forgotten that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" (Jas. 1:17).
Tea time in Russia usually takes up more time than the meal, and this was no exception. We drank tea, visited, talked about the church, family, and life in general. The hours slipped away, and before we knew it the sun was beginning to set. The time came for me to return to the apartment where I was staying in Vorkuta, and Mesha, wanting to make sure I made the journey safely, put on his coat and hat on to walk me home. That night, as I lay on my bed thinking about the day's activities, and the blessings that are truly mine, I simply could not get it off my mind that “she had only two cups.”