Limitless

Ramadan has started! For those of you that are unfamiliar with this term, Ramadan is a time each year when Muslims fast all day every day from sun up to sun down… for an entire month. This means no eating OR drinking (yes, even water) until 8:30 at night. What makes matters worse is that New York has been experiencing an INTENSE heat wave this past week. It has been incredibly miserable even for those of us who do not wear head coverings and can drink water, so I can’t imagine what it’s like for the Muslim ladies.

Urban Impact centers lose a percentage of our students during Ramadan every year. Our English centers consist mainly of people of different religions such as Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, so a Ramadan prevents many of the Muslim students from coming. So some of us interns were praying the entire month of June that not too many of our students would drop out during Ramadan….

A couple days before Ramadan, my teammate Lauren boldly prayed:

“God, overflow our centers during Ramadan”

I remember sighing to myself, thinking it was cute that Lauren had such a hope and already feeling sad that it just wasn’t going to happen. We have many Muslim students, no way would we be overcapacity when Ramadan hits. Severely under capacity?…yes, definitely.

The first day of Ramadan comes…. The South Asian Center BOOMS. One of the men that teaches there tells one of our other interns “man it’s crazy, this place is overflowing”.

That night we pray:

“God, help our centers to be so full that we don’t even have enough seats for everyone”

We run out of seats the very next day.

So, from this I have learned two things:

1.) God is bigger than Ramadan. Way bigger. No other religion, customs, people, or traditions can surprise Him, scare Him, or stop Him.

2.) Sometimes, we limit God in our prayer. He can do abundantly more than we could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). Be bold in your prayers to Him because I’m really embarrassed about how I doubted He could do this. I’m super thankful for Lauren’s trust that God could answer any prayer or I may have not noticed this miracle in the same way.


In the meantime, we have literally had to CLOSE OUR REGISTRATION FOR ENGLISH CLASSES. So much for the lack of students during Ramadan, eh? Can we just take a moment and marvel…. Lord God, You are SO cool. Thank You for overflowing our centers.