Mysterious ways

Life is so full of inspiration when The Spirit of The Lord is dwelling in your heart! Today I just have to brag on Jesus for a bit as He really blessed me with the love of a friend who has very little life left to her. Her name is Delphia and she lives at a care clinic here in Escondido. Jesus blessed me with her as friend after my old office manager (Delphia's daughter) told her about me and my faith. Being a Christian and desiring more company, she asked her daughter if I would be willing to come visit her. I agreed to the proposition with the thought that such occurrences happen rarely in life. When The Spirit offers such an opportunity on a silver platter it is best to take it!

I wanted to befriend and serve this woman with the desire to bless her. It is easy as a young, 32-year-old man, to believe that the blessings would be a one way street. After all, what can an old woman who pees in her pants and can barely walk anymore do for someone who seemingly has his entire life before him? Whereas her talk is about whether or not to get a catheter and how much longer her cancer will permit her to have, mine is about mission trips to Utah and beginning massage therapy school. But these comparisons show the limit of what the world offers. We can call them "circumstances" (whether good or bad). Such worldly vanity is where the flesh stops and God takes over. He is not the God of circumstances and He was desiring to show me that I was not there to bless her so much as we were put into one another's lives to bless one another and ultimately give Him the glory of sacrificial love.

I was relating to Delphia some stories about a remarkable woman I knew and gearing myself up for the pious platitudes most old people (ok, almost all people) say when an eligible bachelor or bachelorette is speaking about the matters of the heart in relation to the opposite sex. My favorite such platitudes are, "Don't worry! You'll find someone when the time is right!" Or, "Keep putting yourself out there!" Or, "You're such a good person! I'm sure someone will come along soon and you'll snatch her right up!"

As if meeting the "right woman" is a matter of chance, my desire, my goodness, or my willingness to exert myself!

She spoke no such thing, however, but stopped me dead in my tracks after I said "I think I'm almost ready to meet someone." She simply replied, "No. It is not about when you are ready but when God is ready." Her wisdom cut to my heart because she not so subtly suggested that my pursuit of God was of ultimate importance. Seek first the Kingdom of God and all things will be added to you, as the scripture says. It was a breath of fresh air to have the guard around my heart pierced and find that my words had been used frivolously. Oh, that we would all seek to find and impart wisdom as if it were buried treasure! Her comment ended with a word of compassion that spoke to her own personal struggles. "Wait upon the Lord".

Neither of us knew where that scripture was exactly (indeed, it is all over the scriptures), but upon hearing I considered what I wanted to read to her from the Bible and settled on Psalm 27 as one of my favorite verses comes from King David's heart of hearts. He writes simply:

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
    and to inquire in his temple.

Great blessings and delight came at the end of the psalm, however:

WAIT FOR THE LORD;
    be strong and let your heart take courage;
    WAIT FOR THE LORD!

Delphia and I laughed and laughed. We also cried. How good was God in that moment though? Delphia was so burdened with the meaning of her life, being effectively restricted to a hospital bed. "Wait upon Me" was all Jesus wanted her to hear. I was bringing attention to myself and my own plans and all Jesus wanted me to hear was, "Let me bless you in my time. I am so good and I love you so much. Receive the fullness of My joy!"