The God I serve...

There are times that we get so caught up in our lives that we forget to thank God for the air we breathe, the life we live and the blessing it is just to "be."  Then there are other times...  Times when you hurt so badly you are innately aware of God's power because you desperately need it.  Times when your heart is so full that everywhere you look, you see evidence of how small you are and how big God is.  

There is a passage in Luke 19 that has been on my heart recently.  Jesus had been healing the sick, blind and possessed, he had been teaching and instructing.  As he entered Jerusalem, "the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen.  They said, 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'  But some in the crowd said to Jesus, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples!'  He replied, 'If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.'"

These disciples weren't singing worship songs because they happened to be at church.  They weren't praising God with their friends while unfortunately excluding those who didn't know Him.  They weren't saying what sounded pretty.  They were simply being honest.  They were proclaiming the amazing things they had witnessed and experienced.  It wasn't a show.  It was Real.  They were so amazed it was impossible for them not to talk about it.  The God they served was too big for them to be quiet.

I understand those people.  I AM those people.  The God I serve is big - so big at times that I get overwhelmed and it's impossible not to talk about it.

The God I serve...

• Healed Zoe's cancer - We laid side-by-side in her hospital bed, and I held her when she was sickest.  I kissed her perfectly bald head and clipped her nails when the chemo made them peel.  I was there for her worst days.  And I was there for the best ones.  Just a few months ago, I played with her in the pool and planted strawberries in my backyard.  I watched her run and roll and kick and skip.  You have to acknowledge the worst days to fully appreciate the best days.  She wasn't a little sick.  She didn't have something that can be explained away or could have worked itself out.  As scary as it still is to say, she would have died.  The God I serve healed her little body, renewed the faith of her mom and in turn, ensured that Zoe (and her brother, dad and other family) will get to hear His Good News.
• Formed Hannah's body - My newest god-daughter was born at 26 weeks, 14 weeks early.  She weighed just over 2 lbs on July 20th.  At the time, there was no real explanation as to why Brandy went into labor so early.  Since then we have learned that she had a rare infection.  I don't know if that infection would have hurt Hannah.  I don't know if Brandy could have carried her longer with medication and bed-rest.  What I do know is that while Hannah was tiny and needed to finish developing her lungs, she was otherwise perfectly healthy.  In all her time in the NICU, she never once had complications or illness.  She went home on Friday weighing almost 6 lbs, eating better than some "normal" newborns.  The God I serve formed her perfect little body right before our eyes and taught us new levels of prayer in the meantime.
• Mended my marriage - After church last week, a friend told me what a blessing it was for her to see David and I holding hands as we sang.  She commented on how much in love we are and how sweet it is.  Like everything that's truly worth something, that love was costly.  We held hands on Sunday because we know from experience those words to be true - He is the Only thing that's everlasting, the Only thing you can set your hope in.  A few years ago, we sat in our living room at opposite ends of the sofa and said we'd both rather not do this anymore.  If it were up to us, we would have gone our ways and begun the process of making new lives that weren't so hard and didn't hurt so bad.  But the God I serve is big enough that when we both looked at him and not ourselves or each other, we learned what Real love, grace, forgiveness, courage, honesty and commitment are about.
• Saved Brynna - I laugh a lot about not wanting to be pregnant again.  That joking, however, will never mean that I take for granted the gift of my baby girl.  While I didn't love the pregnancy experience, I am most grateful God allowed me to experience the blessing.  Having Brynna under emergency circumstances, watching them rush her away not breathing fully on her own, and trusting her doctors to make the best decisions for her made me all the more aware of whose she is.  She is a gift that was entrusted to David and I.  The God I serve healed her so that I could learn a little deeper what it means to trust and be blessed by Him.
• Filled my empty places - Some holes are there whether we asked for them or not.  Some holes we inflict upon ourselves.  Some holes have the potential to swallow the rest of you.  While I grew up saying and doing the right things, I found myself at 23 with a lot of emptiness.  As I stood on the edge of one of those gaping holes about to collapse in on myself, a hand pulled me out.  The process of filling those holes was long and arduous.  It was painful, dark at times, and overwhelming.  But the God I serve heaped grace so lavishly on me that He didn't just fill my empty spaces; there are mountains where holes used to be. 

The God I serve is big.  Huge.  He's so large that, at times, I find it hard to comprehend.  That's where I find myself today.  In complete awe and feeling so inadequate to express it.

Let me never be guilty of being quiet so the stones have to praise in my place...