It's always sad when someone you love is sick. My wife was complaining about how bad she felt when she went to bed. Something disagreed with her stomach. We had eaten at Chuckie Cheese Pizza Parlor yesterday afternoon and in the middle of the night I was awakened with that dastardly sound. Cleaning up after someone you love is seldom a chore. Besides pinching my nose when I got close to the mess, it was no big deal. I wonder how I can take that attitude in serving others? It's one thing to serve your wife or family, but another to serve someone you don't know (or even don't like)? But that would be the way to do it, if it were possible to love others in such a way as to serve them with no thought of the cost or the effort being exerted.
I'm a bachelor this week as my wife went back to the Southern part of Texas (nothing's worse than driving when sick, but she's feeling better now) to help her best friend care for a sweet little girl. The papers have been filed, so she should be discharged to stay somewhere else than the hospital. She'll need to go in just once a day for changing the dressings. From talking to my wife just a little bit, I've found out that it's much worse than I even thought. The sweet little girl has no skin on her behind and the back of her legs. The pain that it must be when they change dressings! They scrub hard with soap and stuff. OUCH! It's painful to think about, much less experience. I've talked with people close to me that've said they'd rather not live than go through burn recovery (if 50% or more of their body was covered with third degree burns). The pain is just incredibly unbearable.
So, moving right along to Rees Howells, Intercessor, the 20th chapter is titled: "Called Out From Wage Earning." One thing that is pointed out about this man is that he did not live in some "pie in the sky" monastary existence. He worked seven hours a day in a mine shaft -- digging for coal! Talk about earning his keep! Wow.
God called him to take a step of faith and leave his job, though. God promised to take care of Him if he only trusted in Him and nothing else. He so trusted God that, in the first month of this new adventure, he told the enemy that he wasn't even going to pray during that entire first month about money, fully trusting God as much as he had trusted his employer before.
On the last day of the month (which Howells spent on a Black Mountainside -- yes, cue the Zeppelin instrumental -- just spending intimate time praising His God) he was arguing with his dad, who thought it was a good idea to take the mine owner's offer for the job position that he'd held open. He tried to explain to his dad that his Lord was faithful, and it wasn't as crazy as it sounded. As they were talking a postman delivered a letter, which had a ministry position invitation for the London City Mission, offering a 100 pounds a year (I guess a salary that'd take care of him), and both he and his dad burst out laughing and rejoicing at God's provision.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at June 12, 2006 01:16 PM