Thursday, November 8, 2018

Missing Christmas

I've been behaving like a spoiled brat lately.  I've been pouting about being hot and sweaty but most of all, about not being able to observe all of my multitudinous holiday traditions.  I've spent more than a little time poring over photos from Christmas's past on my phone and watching others holiday prep on social media.  It's been making me cranky and irritable for the last few days.  I prayed.  I asked others to pray for me, to take away this unholy desire for security and comfort that gripped my heart.  Thank the Lord I serve a God who answers prayer.  And His answer came in the form of a prayer request for someone else, someone who doesn't even know me.  A woman at the hospital just lost her seventh of eight children.  After losing her husband earlier in the year.  Her only surviving child is handicapped.  Her grief is beyond measure.  How can I dare to preach the goodness and grace of the God of the Bible to such as these?  People who have experienced searing, brutal loss that puts missing Christmas trees and delayed moments with family (family that are still very much alive!) into its proper perspective.  Missions work is HARD work.  It will often leaved you drained and overwhelmed.  But one of its blessings is the stories you hear and the way that God weaves those stories into my own life to change me just as much as the people we are evangelizing. 

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