Little Bits and Leftovers

The tension lay thick as a layer of fog over the front end that morning. We were working slowly on a day that demanded we move fast. The baggers were all busy with other tasks, leaving groceries to pile up on the belts. There was a break in the communication flow between managers and their minions, so the customers knew more about the day's sale than the cashiers checking them out. And the incessant yawns of those nearby made me long for a cup of coffee that was decidedly outside the moment's reach. We were stressed out, put out, and just plain grumpy, and it looked like we were headed for a very long day.

And then God came through my line.

He arrived in the guise of a small, bald baby, seated in the front of her mother's cart. Her soft pink arm was raised high as her fingers opened and closed repeatedly in her version of a wave, a huge smile on her face when her lips weren't closed in her attempt to blow kisses my way. She was a 10-month old bundle of joy, and my heart was instantly captivated at the sight of her. The rush of work that had seemed so important just seconds ago stopped completely as I stood transfixed with my hands clasped in front of my chest, and my eyes wide with delight as I took in the sight. Somehow her mother's order was processed and her bags loaded into the cart; I know I didn't help much in the effort. I just knew that I had to absorb every minute of the Son-light that baby radiated, and by the time the cart was pushed away, there was a smile firmly affixed to my soul once more.

He didn't need to explain Himself to me - I got the picture! - but I guess He wanted to emphasize His point. So it wasn't but a few customers later that a woman came through with a bag of chocolate chips that suddenly split open and spilled everywhere. They were on the belt, on the floor, and mixed in with the rest of her groceries. We quickly got her another bag and cleaned up the mess as best we could. But for the next hour or so a chocolate chip would suddenly come down the belt seemingly out of nowhere, knocked loose from a temporary lodging by the multitude of groceries passing by to suddenly catch my eye. I gathered them up with a grin as they came and soon found that my mood was rising as high as the little stack of brown candy by my water bottle. And I got the point.

God doesn't leave us out to dry on our difficult days. His promise to never leave us alone doesn't just apply to what we consider the bigger issues of life. He's in the little things that bother us as well, and He responds in little ways...in little bits of sweetness that He sends our way, hidden in the mix of ordinary moments to suddenly surprise and captivate our hearts...to lift our moods and get us through. Too often we don't see them as the gifts they are, and we brush them aside or kick them out of the way, as some later customers did with the remaining chips they found on the floor. How much happier we would be if we would gather them up with gratitude and drink them in to refresh our thirsty souls.

I did just that the rest of the day. There was the coworker who made me laugh with a funny story in the breakroom...a manager who made a point of saying hi as she went by...a customer's comment about my hair...a friend who waved hi as she waited in another line. When the list became too long for my memory, I grabbed a strip of receipt tape and began jotting them down. You see, God is also into gathering. He instructed His followers to gather manna, fish, souls...even leftovers. Each time after Jesus fed the groups of thousands that were following Him, He gathered up the leftover pieces of fish and bread so they wouldn't be wasted. Leftovers of a blessing are a treasure themselves! Little things matter to God, and at the end of my shift I had a list of the same that brought an abundance of surprise smiles on a day that was a struggle.

When I thought I needed a coffee fix, God sent chocolate chips to give me repeated sips of Living Water instead, and I found that they were what I was thirsty for after all.

“...she said, 'Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' Then Jesus said to her, 'Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.'”

(Matthew 15:27-28 NIV)

Shout-out to Sisterhood

How funny that we met at Applebee's for lunch on this day in September, a month I'd devoted to eating an apple a day to celebrate the onset of fall as well as dabble in apple-based food choices for the nutritional benefit they contain. Little did I realize that our noon-time meal was destined to be a food date for my soul that contained nourishment beyond anything set before me on a plate.

My friend and I met several years ago in the bleachers of a basketball court, the sport itself relatively unimportant; we were simply moms sitting on the sidelines of our children's lives, supporting our kids in their current field of play. As such we had much to talk about, and I soon found that I was attending games for conversational reasons as much as to watch boys bouncing balls on wooden boards for an hour or so.

We're still at it. Five boys between us, and none of them living at home anymore, yet we meet regularly to catch up with each other as much as to discuss what our kids are doing. This last time our talk turned to the subject of siblings. Her mother and aunts she affectionately refers to in combination as “The Sisters”, their antics and attitudes a constant source of love and entertainment to the rest of the family, but a form of relationship that she has not experienced herself.

“You've never had a sister,” her mother lamented to her recently. To be honest, I don't think she's ever felt the loss, as she keeps busy being a sister to the brother she was born to and the many friends she was born again to minister to along the way.

The conversation, however, remained on my mind. Evidence of the love of my own younger sister fill my life and my home, from messages I find in my email in-box to postcards stuck on my fridge, to framed pictures on my windowsills and gifts stitched by her hand mounted on my walls. From our infancy on we've shared everything, from clothes to baths to bedrooms to toys. A built-in best friend, I didn't have to wait for her to come knocking on my door to see if I wanted to play. We grew up surrounded by the same relatives, neighbors and family friends. As such we speak a common language; there are memories we share, jokes we laugh at and heartbreaks we cry over together that nobody else on the planet can relate to with me the way she can.

That doesn't mean we were always close. After drifting apart somewhat in our high-school years we were simply distant daughters of the same father and mother for a number of years that followed. As the years passed away, however, we came together emotionally if not in physical distance, as the life experiences we shared with one another forged us once more into the best of friends that we remain today. Yet at any point in our relationship, regardless of how we were getting along, we were still sisters linked by blood, if not by choice.

Yet the opposite is true in the spiritual realm. It's by choice that we are born again into the kingdom of God and then allow Him to put us into sibling relationships with people of His choosing and linked by His Blood, friendships that perhaps lack the limited view of a shared past yet stretch beyond the boundaries of this earthly existence into the joyful expectation of an eternal future.

They are not without purpose, however, on this side of eternity, as to a large extent they are instrumental in getting us to the finish line with soul intact. There are simply some risks you are only willing to take with your sister by your side. In the earthly realm I laughingly submit coloring one's hair and taking a first bite of sushi as members of that group. Spiritually speaking, however, a walk of faith is easier when there's a hand around to pull you back up when you've fallen down, a smiling face in a world of frowns, a fellow traveler who speaks the same language of grace.

My friend and I finally finished our lunches, paid our bills and went on with days that went better because we had spent that time together in love and laughter. While our mealtime meetings always eventually come to an end, it's wonderful that the friendship between us does not.

Perhaps the “friend that sticks closer than a brother” mentioned in Proverbs is Jesus in the heart of a godly sister.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!

(Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 NIV)

Be Keepers

God can sometimes speak a message using no more than two letters placed side by side.

The first such combination to get my attention was one that most church-going Christians are familiar with…the P.K.‘s, or Preacher’s Kids, among us, a segment of society with unique characteristics and traits based on their experiences while growing up in a minister’s home. But in the 1990’s the P.K.’s I heard about all the time changed to the Promise Keepers, a movement aimed at encouraging men to be true to their promises to God, their wives, and their families. Then my kids turned into teenagers, and one in particular spoke nothing but the language of B.K., or Burger King…and it was in that period of my life that I very nearly became addicted to the Whopper Jr. with cheese. Maybe it was the promise that I could have it my way that drew me back again and again. But lately the King has been drawing me with another message using the letters B.K., one that has little to do with burgers and fries. Instead it centers on the importance of living life His way, specifically in the area of being my brother’s keeper.

It’s first in Genesis that the question of our responsibilities to our siblings arises, when God questions Cain concerning the whereabouts of his brother Able, and he responds with the query, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It’s a question God is still answering in the affirmative today.

To tell the truth, the past thirty days have been pretty rough on many of my spiritual siblings, those likewise born into the family of God who are walking the road of faith beside me. Day after day has brought little but bad news in hospital rooms, doctor’s offices, emails on my computer and text messages on my phone.

Clearly there are some things God expects of us in response. To start with, He desires that we keep an eye on our brother, to know where he’s at, spiritually rather than physically. That means, of course, that we watch our brother’s heart, not so much his comings and goings. This can only happen if we communicate regularly and have built a relationship between us, so that we are able to talk freely and honestly about the difficulties we’re having and the struggles we face without fear of being judged or condemned.

The second expectation then is that we keep our brother’s confidences to ourselves, to be people who can be trusted not to divulge that which has been shared in private conversations and counseling sessions. We’re to help keep our brother on track, steering him back on course when he gets distracted or knocked about by the cares of this world. It might be up to us to just keep him moving, to pick him up and help him along when he feels like dropping out of the race or giving up on the Christian life completely. In order to do that, of course, we have to be keepers of our own spiritual lives, that we continually have something of value to share. All of the above can be summed up in Christ’s command that we simply keep loving one another as He has loved us.

In fact, the only way we can do as God expects is to keep our eye on the one Brother who taught us how to live a life of loving others. Just as He said He did nothing except that which He saw His Father doing, so should we keep our eyes focused on the Jesus we see in the Bible constantly loving, lifting, and leading others, and who now lives in our hearts to spur us on to lives of the same.

God’s purpose in this is two-fold. He wants us all to make it to the spiritual finish line, of course. But His heart is moved by those who have yet to even enter the race. It’s His hope that they will see Him in the love we have for one another (John 13:35) and be drawn by His Light on their own dark days.

Finally, God expects us to keep our brother in prayer. A lot of the people I love are in difficult places right now, and I approached my devotional time this morning with a heavy burden on my spirit as a result. Not surprisingly, God had the solution ready and waiting for me. He told me to list those whom I was most concerned about on the open page of my prayer journal. Obediently I wrote the names of four people whose needs were foremost on my heart, acknowledging again my complete inability to alter the life situations of any of them. On a post-it note I then was told to write out the words of my favorite verse: Be anxious for nothing, but in all things, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6,7) Next I was instructed to tape the note paper on top of the names I’d written moments earlier. When I did so, I noticed that I was unable to see the problems I’d put down earlier, covered as they were by God’s promise of peace through the simple acts of prayer and thanksgiving.

A couple of hours later, I stopped at the local Starbucks, noting that it was shortly before noon. I was surprised to see the store nearly empty, so used am I to the long lines of the early morning hours when people are looking for a hot pick-me-up on their way to work or school. But I believe that it’s never too late for a latte, especially when pumpkin spice is on the menu, and as I placed my order I soon realized that fewer people in line meant more time to chat with the brew master behind the counter. Nodding my acceptance to his offer of an extra shot of espresso, I asked how his day was going.

“Well, I’m standing up. And I know where I am. So I guess it’s a pretty good day,” came his somewhat surprising reply. My heart, so recently released from the weight of its worry about others, suddenly laughed in response. My “brothers” and I, despite the situations we’re facing together, are likewise still standing. And it doesn’t matter where we are, because we know Whose we are. Truly that makes all the difference, and any day, no matter how difficult, a good one indeed.

“…I am yours…“ (Psalm 119:94 NIV)