But This Time...

Well, it happened again.  It probably happens a lot, and I’m just not aware of it.  But this time…

A friend’s name just kept coming to me for over a month.  And every time I thought of her name, I also felt that I needed to go over to her house and pray for her.  I saw her over this period of time, but I never told her of the promptings.

You know how it is.  Life interferes with our good intentions.  Or maybe I was just lazy and didn’t get over there.  I’d like to believe the former, but I’m pretty sure it was the latter.

Between the holidays, a little traveling, bronchitis and extremely cold weather, I kept putting it on the back burner.  When things calm down, I told myself, I’ll get right on over there.

Finally, this past week, I called her and invited myself over.  I usually don’t do that, but, frankly, I was tired of this feeling that I needed to pray for her.  I just wanted get it over with. It was really in self-defense way more than any spiritual connection.

My strategy was to ask her how she was doing and how her family was doing, then tell her about this nudge I was getting, pray for her, and go on about my business.  In my mind, it was much more about me than it was about her.

So I asked my two polite questions so that I could get on to the praying part.  Forty-five minutes later, the praying began.  In between, she told me what had happened in her family’s life in just the last few days. 

Family problems are always the worst, aren’t they?  It’s a very hard thing when family lets us down.

It just so happens that I had gone through something similar decades ago.  She already knew some of it, but now she knows most of it.  She knows the parts that can help her the most now.  But not because I was oh, so wonderful to show up on her doorstep and listen to her, share with her and pray with her.

No, it wasn’t because of me at all.  It was because God loves her in a very profound way. 

And even though I believe it wasn’t because of me, the crazy thing is that I got a blessing out of it even if she didn’t.  Because I felt that God had used little old me in His great big plan.

Mercy!  His blessings come showering down upon us.  Even when we’re just looking out for ourselves. 

Especially when we’re just looking out for ourselves. 

Oh How He Loves You and Me

Many years ago, I was on the team of a fabulously spiritual weekend retreat at a church camp out in the boonies.  There were approximately 30 women participants, and 5 of us on the team were assigned to shepherd the participants around. 

One participant did not want to be there.  She had a pretty hefty scowl and used it all the time. 

Whatever was going on, she didn’t want to be a part of it.  No matter how much we smiled at her and encouraged her, she refused to take part in anything.  No singing, no clapping, definitely no happy face.  She would literally twist around in her chair so that her back was to the front of the room. 

Early on, we decided that we were going to love her to death.  We made a vow that nothing she asked for would be beyond our reach.

The room was too hot?  We opened a window.

The room was too cold?  We closed a window.

She had to go to the bathroom in the middle of a presentation not ten minutes after a bathroom break?  No problem.

Before going to bed that first night, she complained that her back was hurting because of the folding chair she had to sit in.  She wanted to go home.

We asked her to stay just one night and the next day before making the final decision to leave.  She reluctantly agreed.  We knew there were many blessings to be had if she would just hang on a little longer.

After the participants were all snug in their beds, we borrowed a team member’s pickup truck, went to another part of the camp and liberated a recliner from one of the rooms.  We wrestled that thing into the pickup and then wrestled it out of the pickup and into place at the table where the unhappy lady was sitting.

She begrudgingly thanked us the next morning and reclined the rest of the day.  But the thing that got to her the most was when she went to her room during a break that day.  One of the team members had put a heating pad on her bed and turned it on.  When she laid down and realized what had been done, she burst into tears and finally felt the Holy Spirit give her a hug through an ordinary heating pad.  She knew she wasn’t lovable and yet she had been loved by the body of Christ.

I have never seen a woman’s face change so dramatically.  I almost didn’t recognize her.  Without the scowl, she looked completely different.  No, not just different; she looked radiant.    

If anyone belongs to Christ, there is a new creation.

The old things have gone; everything is made new!   

2 Corinthians 5:17