I remember a verse that has built my faith over the years as I open my book by Joyce Meyer, Healing the Brokenhearted. “His Word will not return void but will accomplish that for which He has sent it.” I've come to trust in that verse as true and even if I don't see the result and answer immediately, I trust and believe that it will eventually come to pass. When I walk through dark and troubled times, it is much more difficult to muster up the faith to believe my faith will become sight. And its much easier to believe God's Word is true for others than for myself. I have to look in the mirror each day and live with the heart inside my own chest. But today, God showed me my heart is not unlike that of others, desperately seeking His love and mostly settling for substitutes for the real thing.
As I prayed the love of God would invade the lives of some really hurting women this morning, I was reminded of how God has shown His love to me over the last several weeks. One moment stood out for me, not because it was a tangible gift from another but the way it surprised me. After 10 pm a few nights ago, I drove into my driveway and my headlights caught the color of a small garden flag waving next to my porch steps. Since I'd spent all the day before cleaning my garage, the hose was still lying along the steps as I grew tired before finishing the clean up. “What's Bloomin?” the small flag covered in daisies asked? As I touched the flag with my fingers and asked myself who had surprised me while I was gone, I saw a gift bag sitting by my door. I could hardly wait to see what was inside. Pulling the tissue paper away, I saw at least a dozen candles and tarts of different colors and fragrances inside the bag. I knew immediately it was a gift from my neighbor who'd already shared some of these with me earlier. Our conversation had been one that allowed her to see my heart has been hurting. She didn't allow that revelation to be wasted. She acted on it. And I keep thinking of how she went about bringing this blessing to me. It really made all the difference.
You see, I won't forget the surprise of getting my first glimpse of this small flag in the dim light of my headlights that will stick with me for a long time. It's been in the last several weeks when darkness seemed to come to put out the light within me, I've seen God's love come in so many ways to obliterate this darkness. A helping hand, a hand over mine praying for me to see how much God loves me, an email of encouragement, a blessing prayed over my life, a small flag and the scent of springtime in my kitchen drawn from a bag of blessing.
It says in the book of John, the darkness can never overshadow the light of Christ. He is Light that blazes out in the darkness. It takes such a small effort on our part to be that light to someone else who is experiencing the assault of darkness on their heart. We are tempted to hang out in the guilt and shame of the past, the damage we've done to others or they to us, or run in terror from what we see in our own hearts. But God has planted His eternal love within us and seeds of His love can begin to bloom even in the darkest of hours. We can look within and see What's Bloomin' inside our hearts as He can still use us to bring the fragrance of the love of Christ to the hurting. We must rise up out of the darkness and take our rightful position as the Beloved of Christ. Other women need the light and life to shine in their darkness.
What did I pray for the hurting women I found on my heart this morning? That they would experience the love of Christ today in a real and practical way...that someone who carries the light of Christ within would reach out to them in love, in spite of their own struggles to …
touch them...
speak a word of encouragement to them...
speak a blessing over them in prayer...
believe in them and for them when it seems too hard for them right now...
smile at them...
visit them...
sit with them in the pain...
leave an offering, a small surprise to delight them in their darkness
Today, let's pray for one another but let's not let it stop there. Let's rise up out of the darkness and run to others with the light. Let the Light lead you to the ones He wants you to touch today.
“In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it [put out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it.]”
John 1: 4-5
Father,
Help us not receive the darkness in our hearts but instead receive and spread your Light.
