I am feeling very emotional tonight as I have just gotten home from London where I left my mom, brother and sister-in-law. They fly back to Alabama tomorrow.
I feel bereaved to leave them. I have just ended a three week course of home, family and friends, starting with us spending two weeks in Alabama and then having my mom, brother and sister-in-law over for ten days. So I ask, why am I here, across the ocean, in this cold rainy land?
Have you ever had time to watch honey as it poured slowly from the squeezy honey-bear bottle?
Have you stopped, like a child, and been mesmerized by the thick, rich golden liquid as it lands, folding over each layer? That is what God's rich mercy and love feels like to me. Despite my unloveliness, He keeps pouring his love over me, layer after layer, covering me with blessing and affection. I am unloving, but I know Who love is...........................
So today, as my mom and I arrived at the Betel Center in North London, we were just going to pop in for a moment to use the toilet before we left the car and headed off for the tube station.
I walked in the dining room and saw a new guy sweeping the floor. Really, just a bag of bones in a wool sweater. I asked him his name - Lee. He said that he had been in Betel before a couple of years ago, stayed for eight months - that he got strong and put on weight back then. I asked how he was doing. He said that he was really having a hard time at it, he hadn't slept in 10 days. Heroin addict. Very skinny when they come in and they don't sleep for weeks. I told him that he was doing one of the hardest things that he will ever try to do. And that it is worth it, so worth it. I looked at him and my heart opened up and I wanted to take out my spirit, my soul and turn it inside out to show him the changes, the work God has patiently done in my life. I wanted him to see the goodness, the mercy, the grace, the physical blessings that God has poured on my life like golden honey. I wanted to grab him and hug his painfully thin frame and transfer love into his brain and heart, but I knew that if I did anything like that I would scare the daylights out of him and he would probably run screaming out the door and straight into the arms of the drug dealers waiting in the park across the street.
But that is why I am here, to share the honey. I didn't make it, buy it, earn it. But it's really great stuff.
3 comments:
That's beautiful. Great analogy.
Thanks for the reminder. I'm not as far away, but I'm missing my church.
I hate that I didn't get to see you.
I'm so full of emotion after reading this, Dana. Hurting for you, because your heart grieves for family and friends. Rejoicing with you, because the Spirit of God still confirms the rightness of your work. Praise God, you're real and tender and brave.
A friend told me the other day that I was good for her. I thought it was the highest compliment, by the grace of God, that any friend could ever pay. So now I say to you, dear Dana, you are good for me.
That gripped my heart. I am still in the stage of being so anxious to get over there and I sometimes forget how hard it can be. You are believing the Gospel in the midst of your struggle. That is really beautiful.
Post a Comment