Inspired like Fahrenheit

I’d been ignoring Him.  At least I didn’t want to deal with this one thing.  My time with theater had shown I could actually memorize a monologue I once viewed nearly impossible.  And the notion had repeated in my head that I needed to memorize more than just theater lines.  Memorization of Scripture would be priority.  One day I visited patients in the hospital, and a lady asked me to write down Scripture for her family.  Suddenly my mind went blank.  No verses from Hebrews.  No verses from Psalms.  Nothing I’d memorized long ago was coming to mind, and the emptiness hit hard.  How reliant I had become on a concordance and having a hard-copy Bible at hand.  Yet this emptiness and depth of sorrow set me on a very determined road.  First I prayed, “Lord, don’t let this family here in the hospital be devoid of Scripture due to my neglect.”  The Lord pointed me to a hard-copy Bible, so I copied verses, humbly handed them to the family, and proceeded home to begin memorizing Romans 5.  Aside from the Bible, one of my all-time favorite books is Fahrenheit 451, in which the firemen take the backwards role of igniting fires.  Bradbury makes us think.  Toward the end, he introduces us to the bearded men who memorize books.  These men memorize to keep their knowledge safe and intact and out of the hands of the firemen.  Their minds are libraries.  Today, in real life, I need the wisdom of the Bible safe and intact in me.  The task of memorization has led me to meditate and more closely appreciate the love of God.  How immensely I am pleased to now answer the Lord’s prompt to memorize.  I’ve experienced anew the words of 1 Corinthians 13:4 – “Love is patient, love is kind.”  Will you choose to memorize as well?     

Love prevails for sake of victims

Months of work possibly down the drain.  Eight months of writing this curriculum, and I didn’t want to accept that it was over.  Not that I wrote every day or even every week, but it had been an ongoing project, and God had inspired throughout.  Yet according to a single recent communication, we now stood in a bleak spot, as we would be denied the interaction we hoped for.  We had planned to implement this coursework to aid the victims next month, and it’s a drastic understatement to say sexual exploitation and trafficking is a serious topic.  Our hope was high for connecting with these girls and aiding their recuperation and re-entry into regular life.  And as highly as we had hoped and as deeply as we were stunned, God took this difficult situation and subtracted out any hint of despair.  As I drove to meet up with my friend who began this ministry to serve these victims, the Lord refreshed me.  Realizing human tendency would have me slump into a bad mood, I observed quite the opposite happening.  The Lord protected me from temptation and supplied me new joy.  From my motionless posture of slowly digesting the bad news, the Lord rescued me into a positive perspective that wouldn’t allow me to fall back.  This roadblock would not win out over our love of these girls who have been hurt so deeply.  John 16:20 says, “…You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”  This was a new version of God converting bad into good, for that afternoon my friend and I recognized some very exciting and unanticipated avenues for ministry.  Indeed our hope in Him is worthy to guide us through the ups and downs of the ordinary day.  His truths are tangible for you and me.

Medical words of a volunteer

Physical pain forces us to pay attention.  When it's intense, we have no option to ignore.  Last month, our family felt the panic of pain pressing through my daughter’s body.  Dizziness, high blood pressure, a racing heart, then a week-long host of physicians that didn’t agree.  All the while, she’s enduring pain that excruciates throughout her upper back.  We’re praying, we’re pleading, and we’re empathizing alongside.  Then one day at my daughter’s hospital, there’s this unexpected conversation with a volunteer.  The 2 girls hadn’t seen each other in a while, and my daughter realizes this sweet volunteer has experienced almost exactly the same set of symptoms.  Her words brought such a welcomed calm to our whirlwind pace.  It seemed the Lord anointed the conversation, as if to say, “I’m here.  I know.  I see everything that’s happening.”  Just hearing about it made my shoulders finally relax.  It wasn’t a definitive medical diagnosis, but even greater, it was the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Still now, a month later, the doctor appointments continue, yet this particular conversation has been a highlight.  For whatever reason the Lord has allowed these events, we have been blessed to witness Him at work.  With new fervency, we sought Him, and He has reminded us we’re never alone.  Psalm 121 begins, “I lift my eyes up to the hills—where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”  Right there in our thick of things, right there in the eye of our storm, the Lord revealed Himself to us.  How I love Him for that.