I was crying by the end of her speech. I would have been
crying anyway, but the fact that the class had been taught in a shelter and
this woman had been one of the quietest people in the class at the time made
her words touch me in an even deeper way. She’s diabetic, and I had hoped that
I had made a difference in her health by teaching her about things to do with
the foods she was eating, but it’s hard to know if we’re reaching someone or
not. But the power of the Holy Spirit is more powerful than we can ever be on
our own, and all God asks of us is that we are willing vessels to do His work.
When we do what we can with all of our hearts, He makes miracles happen. That
she spoke so much and felt the need to say so much to me I knew was the power
of the Holy Spirit too. Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for the
least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40) He
was letting me know through this woman how much I had done for Him.
It has been a rough time for me in my life and in my job. I
know there are other people who have had worse things to deal with and deal
with them every day, but for me it’s been rough in my life for as long as I can
remember. I’ve been blessed too and protected from much worse things – I know
that and I am grateful – but it has been rough, and lately it has been even
rougher in some ways although there is so much to be thankful for that I feel
like I shouldn’t be saying that. But growing pains can hurt, and I know that’s
what I’m going through now. God has been bringing things up so they can be dealt
with and healed once and for all, and I just wish sometimes that it would all
just miraculously be resolved and go away. I know the blessing is coming, I know
the promises He has made He will fulfill, but going through this time of
struggle when I don’t see how those promises are possible is hard to keep
walking through. The words the woman said to me outside of the shelter let me
know that God knows how much this time of waiting and trial has been hurting my
heart and how difficult it has been for me to keep going.
One year ago the Lord spoke a word to me that was so hard to
believe that I was afraid to believe it. But He spoke it so clearly and then
confirmed it so many times in so many ways that I had to keep trusting Him that
it was true. It seemed like it was going to happen at the beginning of this
year, but then just as suddenly it stopped. And then it came back again just a
few weeks ago, right in time for this anniversary, and He keeps telling me that
I can count on Him to deliver on His promise. But so much seems so much in the
way, and there are so many things that are happening that seem so wrong. I feel
drained and exhausted by it all, and then a woman says something like the woman
said to me yesterday, a woman who doesn’t normally talk too much says a long and
beautiful speech that could only come from the mouth of God.
Sometimes when God answers prayer, He does it in a way that
we might not recognize if we’re looking for that thing in a specific way that
we want it to show up. I had a conversation with someone recently where they
said all of the things that I have been wanting to hear them say, and it seemed
so out of context and not in the way I’d been expecting, and I almost missed
what they’d said because it wasn’t the way I’d imagined the conversation would
go. It’s almost as if we need to tune out the world and its expectations – and our
own – and tune into another frequency, a higher one, that tunes us into the
vibrations of God’s love.
There will always be things and people who will come to
distract us from hearing that higher frequency. There will always be times that
it feels like there is a crushing weight smothering any possibility of life and
love, but there is nothing that is more powerful than the love of God, and when
we abide in Him, when we are connected to Him, we have that power available to
us always. In John 15:7, Jesus makes an extraordinary promise, “If you abide in
me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will and it shall be done for
you.” He is not speaking here about asking for selfish things, because the very
act of abiding in Him and having His words abide in us makes it so that we love
in the way that He loves and we will desire the things that He does. Our prayers and
the things that we ask for will be in tune with His frequency, and when we get
our signals crossed He is always able to bring us back to His channel.
There is a great Who song from the album “Who’s Next” called
“Getting in Tune,” and when I just looked it up I found something in Wikipedia
that I never knew had been written about in a critical reference of that song.
In lines that are footnoted to A.G. Parker and S. Grantley’s “The Who By
Numbers” from 2010, we read, “It is left ambiguous whether he is referring to a
woman or a spiritual figure. The lyrics reflect the contradictions Townshend
was feeling between his desire for spirituality and self-understanding against
his persona as a hard-drinking hard-partying rock star.” Funny how that song
came to mind now as I write this, funny how God can speak to us through the
most unlikely places. “I’m singing this note ‘cause it fits in well with the
way I’m feeling. There’s a symphony that I hear in your heart sets my head a
reeling. But I’m in tune, right in tune. I’m in tune, and I’m gonna tune right
in on you.”
If we open our hearts and our minds and our ears to the
frequency that God is broadcasting at, we’ll be able to hear Him loud and
clear, through all the rest of the white noise there is out in the atmosphere.
And He may speak to us through a rock song, through a usually quiet woman,
through a conversation we weren’t expecting to have. All we need to do is be
ready and open to hear Him, because He’s speaking all the time. All we have to
do is listen.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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