And it hurts to watch that person hurt and face uncertainty. So you pray and pray and make food and send texts and visit and ask God to show you how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to these people you suddenly realize you care very much for.
Then you stand by in amazement as God answers prayer and performs miracle after miracle. And as only God can do, He brings beauty out of ashes - a deepening friendship with not just the one brunette and her husband but the other brunette and her husband, too.
After all this, you find yourself standing in a warm, pleasantly crowded church fellowship hall holding a gallon of milk and two carafes of coffee. You've filled cups and cleared plates and given cups of cold water. You look around at the community you are a part of........finally. Finding your place here took more than half a decade. You came here and everybody already knew everything about you - your husband, his background, his family, where you had gone to college, where you had lived. Their names you knew from wedding invitations and thank you notes and church directories and work schedules, but connecting all the faces took years. They knew you but they already had their own family circles and friend circles, and everybody is related to everybody.
The milk carton sweats in your hand and you are acutely aware of your right bicep supporting the weight of regular and decaf coffee. Each table in the room is adorned with the cross of Christ in preparation for Easter. Each cross is draped with a purple cloth, the color symbolizing His royalty, the wooden cross symbolizing the ultimate price. A pile of large ugly nails lay next to each cross, the nails that were driven into His hands. The King of all came down to be the Servant of all. And as the room bubbles around you, it isn't difficult at all to make out the hands and feet of Jesus, right here, right now.
You see them in the plaid clad cook, calmly preparing a meal for the expected 500 people.
You see them in the benefit coordinator, the aunt of The Friend, who stuck her head out there and said, "I'm doing this" and watched a flood of community support rise up around her.
You see them in the guy wearing the pink polo pouring milk and coffee. "Whoever gives a cup of cold water..."
You see them in the guy wearing the yellow polo taking his table-clearing duty almost a bit too seriously.
You see them in the grandpa playing with the grandson in the pink polo like his dad, the adorable little boy who always has someone vying for his attention. "Whoever welcomes a child like this..."
You see them in the neighbor spending 2 hours in the steamy kitchen doing the most thankless job - washing dishes.
You see them in your husband cutting bars, buttering buns, laughing with
You see them in Miss Jeggings (who has now shed the boots) vacuuming, vacuuming, vacuuming.
Then there's The Friend, the coiner of the phrase, "I don't want to be possessed by my possessions." All this reciprocity, all this measuring back for him.
Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. Luke 6:38
More counting today; so much of God's goodness; so much happiness in giving....
Linking up over HERE.
#207. the free will offering basket, pressed down, shaken together and running over
#208. the privilege, yes the privilege, to serve with all the others at the benefit
#209. kids having fun with Grandma while Momma and Daddy spent the day at the benefit
#210. a girls night with the brunettes
#211. three 3 year-olds together here all day
#212. playing with riding toys in the mud
#213. a pink pedal tractor
#214. taking pictures with a "real" camera (even though it belonged to someone else)
#215. finishing books
#216. homemade buttermilk brownies
#217. all the "thank-you's".....responding with "really, it was my pleasure"
#218. remembering the first Bible verse I memorized
#219. teaching it to my kids
#220. singing the verse to my kids before bed, that melody my favorite song as a child, watching them hushed and listening intently
