I fully believe that God locks a great many more than one message for each and every one of us in the characters, words and stories contained in the good Book of Truth.
And it is up to all of us to find and act on as many of those messages as we can with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Often too, I’m persuaded, for many believers such as I, trying to carry out all of that often involves a great amount of deep soul-searching and self-evaluation.
For me, too, nothing seems to set the stage for much of it all than the alone time that weeks and months of gradual recovery from a long nagging physical thorn can afford.
So I bring this to you, who are reading today.
And as always, I do it greatly because I am persuaded that at least one someone else might benefit from taking it in:
One recent morning, I lay in my room, in positions that help lessen aggravation of a couple hard-to-treat blisters on the back of my legs.
The wounds had developed long ago after I began regularly moving in and out of my power chair and scooter. And they have been a collective royal nuisance ever since.
My daughter, who has been approved by my doctors to be my in-home nurse and care-giver on this, treats my wounds and, with the help of my two grandsons, she also feeds and otherwise cares for me.
But on this particular morning, part of a usually busy work and school day, nobody looked in on me. I didn’t get breakfast; I didn’t get lunch; my wounds didn’t get treated until late evening.
Lying there, I became saddened and disappointed and my next thought was that I should call my daughter and express my anger and frustration.
But then the Holy Spirit reminded me of inspiration I gain from passages the like of Psalm 103:12 – “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
Forgive and forget because God forgives us so much, the passage and others like it cry out to me.
Surely those words from Psalms touch my reverence for God in many more ways. But most strongly, they spark me into wanting to follow Him and to imitate Him.
So then here in my room on that recent morning, I searched my heart and asked myself: “Why can’t you have compassion, understanding and forgiveness for your daughter and grandsons?
“Why couldn’t they have just been so busy and harried that they plain accidentally forgot about your needs? Hadn’t you, on one hectic day or another, even forgotten to look in on your own 94-year-old father?
Then suddenly, none of what did or didn’t happen among my daughter and grandsons seemed to matter.
That was especially when one of the boys walked into my room with a delicious and healthful meal his mom had prepared for me and I learned that, indeed, a series of miscommunications were at the heart of the morning mishap.
My spirits brightened the more, too, when later in the evening my daughter checked my wounds and declared that they are nearly totally healed.
Thank you Lord for all that You continue to do in all of our lives.
“Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice” (Ps.63:7).
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