How beautifully — and persistently — You “woo” us, Lord!
It’s amazing to think that You, Lord — the Almighty Creator of the universe — would be lovesick for us, the objects of Your affection. How does the One who spoke into being hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one made up of hundreds of billions of stars, pay such careful attention to each and every one of us that You know even the number of hairs on our head?
You see the most distant galaxy in all its splendor, in a universe far too vast for us to fathom. Yet You can’t keep Your eyes off us. Your thoughts are far above ours, and You have already set in place natural laws and physical realities that our scientific “advancements” are still too rudimentary to explain. Yet You can’t take Your mind off us.
You pursue and You woo without ceasing. How is it that You never letting anything cool Your ardor for us… including our failure to reciprocate in the ways You desire? The ways You deserve? The ways we desperately need, even if we don’t know it?
I loved seeing You in action today, Lord! I was at the Sebring Relay for Life, raising money for the American Cancer Society. But, mostly, I was there to help people experience the healing power of Your Cross.
By Your Grace, Elizabeth Bunbury (from the not-for-profit Answered Prayers Project) was there with me. We were selling ceramic crosses and hearts. Each one is totally unique and every customer is supposed to purchase the one that “speaks” to them. It never ceases to amaze me how people can look down at a table of 70 crosses and almost immediately KNOW which one is theirs.
But even then, when You have directed them to a particular cross so You can use it to minister to their hearts, You say the cross is “theirs” only temporarily. Only until the person knows it’s time to pass it on to someone else, a particular someone else You make clear to them. But in the meantime, they go on Elizabeth’s website, register their cross and add their own story of hope and encouragement. There are 2,500 such stories on her site already! And the registration numbers have tracked these crosses to all fifty states and twenty countries! All because people “pay it forward”… or, rather, pray it forward.
AMAZING!!!
I remember a middle-aged married couple today. The wife immediately saw the cross that spoke to her; it said “FREE.” She asked her husband if it reminded him of her. He said, “NO.” She put the cross back down. He spotted another one, with a pretty sunrise. He said, ‘When the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” I could tell the other cross was not connecting with her, so I said to the husband: “I guess this is the one the Lord means for you to have.”
Then the wife announced she was stepping away from the table a few yards so her husband could pick one to buy for her. He said, “NO” — because it has to be one that spoke to her. That’s when she gravitated back to the unique design she had been drawn to all along — FREE. That’s when You gave me words to say to her, Lord, that I knew were from Your heart to hers. Words that clearly hit their “mark” in her spirit and filled her heart with joyful anticipation.
“Maybe the reason the Lord keeps drawing you back to this particular one is that He is about to lead you into a new season of FREEDOM. He’s preparing to set you FREE from some things, and when He does, you will be FREE to pass this on to someone else.”
The husband paid for two — one for him and one for her. BEAUTIFUL!!!
“For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)
Remembering today’s stories, Beloved… so many stories!!!
Knowing each story — each person — is one-of-a-kind-special…
Abba’s Girl