The scale (a Romania story)

The ten-day outreach in Romania was divided into three parts: preparation, ministry in the gypsy village, and outreach in the city of Pitesti (“Pih-tesht”).

During the city outreach, there were groups of us who would prayer walk through the main square in the city – a street that was about a 20 minute walk each direction. We were praying for the people we passed, the city in general, and for people who would visit the bus we had parked on the far side of the main square. The bus was full of books – Bibles, books on Christian living, theology, and also fiction and children’s educational books. We had free tea and coffee and were also offering blood pressure checks. People from the church in Pitesti were there to talk with people – which is, of course, much easier when you speak the same language. Most of the team could only say the most basic Romanian phrases by this point and either talked with people through an interpreter or spoke with people who could speak English.

But that is all backstory for what I want to tell you…

Oliviana, our interpreter, and I were prayer walking. The city square is really two squares connected by a walking street – there are shops on either side and little outdoor restaurants, trees, and fountains in the middle. It’s a beautiful, very European city square.

Every so often, we would see an older person sitting along the walking street with a bathroom scale. Their sign generally said “50 bani.” These unconventional street vendors were charging the equivalent of 15 cents for people passing by to weigh themselves.

Oliviana and I were passing one particularly elderly looking man with a scale and a sign and she grabbed my arm. “I feel sorry for him,” she said. “Do you have a leu?” (100 bani = 1 leu). I did have a leu, so we stepped onto his scale… and Oliviana, who is a gifted evangelist, started talking with the man.  She asked him his age – 87 – and about his beliefs and what he thought about heaven. They talked for a while and she explained the gospel. I understood a lot of it, and she translated the rest for me. The gist of what he said was that he’d done good things, so he hoped that he would go to heaven. From what I understand, that’s the essence of many Orthodox believers’ theology of salvation… good works and the hope that the scale weighs heavier on the good side than on the side of their sin.

The verse that came to my head while we were talking was Titus 3:5:

Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…

Oliviana translated the verse and asked if we could pray for him. He said that she could… but while we were praying (Oliviana was praying aloud in Romanian) he pulled out his cell phone and started calling someone.

So we finished praying and said goodbye to the man with the scale.

And that’s the end of my story… not the most uplifting one, but a response that was quite common during our outreach there.

Would you pray with me for the Orthodox believers in Jesus – that they would understand the grace that Jesus has for us, and have assurance that they can be saved?