A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to a sister in Christ for the first time. I haven’t seen this much sadness in a sister’s eyes in a very long time. Looking into her eyes were like looking inside a very deep and dry well. She was hurting and I hurt for her. I had barely introduced myself to her when she began to share her wound with me. I asked her if she would like me to pray for her; her eyes filled with tears. She had been walking alone in a spiritual desert for almost 2 months. She looked away and whispered, “No one has offered to pray for me for six weeks. I haven’t gone to church during this time and no one’s even called.” She was broken and I felt as if I had swallowed my heart. I can only imagine how she must have felt. My sister in Christ, sitting in a room filled with almost two hundred women, hadn’t been prayed for in six weeks. She had to bear her soul to a complete stranger; where were His hands?
Yes, there was sadness in this woman’s heart. I know it won’t last because God stands firm on His promises to answer our prayers. I think that somewhere deep inside her soul she knew this truth as well. She knew the way, she just needed to feel His hands reaching out to hold her. My burden is not just for my hurting brothers and sisters, but also for those who don’t know The Way, The Truth and the Life. If you’re part of His Body, please don’t assume that you’re not needed or valuable; you have a calling that is part of something bigger. It doesn’t take great talent or treasure to be His hands and to hold them out to one person in a hurting world.
Giving our hearts to God doesn’t mean we are spared from tragedy or pain. God rains upon the just and the unjust. Look at Job, he was blameless and upright before God. Look at Jeremiah, all those years of obedience and not one heart won over. Surrendering our hearts to God means – or what it is supposed to mean – is that we are part of something bigger – a body – a community – that is meant to function with one heart, one mind, and one spirit.
“When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.’” John 13:12-15 ESV.
