by MeredithNMills | Jun 24, 2016 | Family, Hope in the Midst of Heartache, Identity in Christ, Uncategorized, Walking by Faith
“What did you swallow?” the triage attendant asks incredulously.
I brace myself and repeat for the hundredth time. “I swallowed the tab from a soda can.”
“What did you swallow?”
“How’d you do that?”
I know. I already feel stupid. Who does this sort of thing?
I’m not your everyday ER patient. I’m not a child who put something weird in her mouth. I wasn’t drunk or otherwise impaired. I’m just a mom who was watching her kids at swim team practice.
Earlier that morning, when I grabbed a can of La Croix and dashed out the door, I had no idea how the day was about to change. When the darling, adorable child pulled off the tab and dropped it inside, I didn’t know I should throw the can in the garbage right that very moment. It never crossed my mind that one could actually swallow something as big as an aluminum tab – before even realizing what had happened.
Nope, I didn’t know any of that – until today.
Now I’m rather an expert on such things.
Two sets of x-rays, 5+ hours in the ER and an endoscopy… still no tab. It left its mark – I can feel the scratch down my throat. But the tab itself has officially gone into hiding.
Quite a frustrating, unpleasant day. Not one I’d like to repeat. Ever.
But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, as I ponder it in retrospect, I’m struck by one thing – the Body of Christ is truly an amazing gift.
My sweet friend at swim team practice dropped everything and drove me home, then cared for my kids all day. My precious hubby cleared his schedule and sat with me in the emergency room. My family and church family prayed. Lots of people sent offers of help via text message. And the GI doctor, who called me after I left the hospital, asked if he could pray for me over the phone. His prayer brought me to tears. He called on God our Healer and Provider and lifted me before the Lord in Jesus’ name.
We Christians have been born again into a truly incredible community!
We are family!
Church friends, long-time friends, new friends, even total strangers…if we’re Christians, we all have one thing in common. We love Jesus. And because of that, we are family.
Right now, story after story is washing over me as I remember God’s love poured out through His people.
Like when our whole church rejoiced at my oldest child’s baptism.
And when concerned friends brought meals during my sick days of pregnancy.
And when a dear man from church sent my little boy a note to say that he’s praying for him.
And when loved ones cried with us as we grieved a miscarriage.
In joys and sorrows, achievements and losses – we’ve been through it all together. This is how it’s supposed to work. This is the Body functioning as God planned. What a beautiful gift!
I know, it’s not happiness and harmony all the time. We the collective Church are human. We’ve been forgiven and made new, but we don’t always act like it. Sometimes we hurt each other – sometimes even on purpose. Oh, how the devil loves to tear us apart!
But we need each other. We need committed friendships and regular fellowship that we aren’t quick to walk away from. It’s worth working at, working through, and working beyond the issues that separate. It’s worth swallowing our pride and admitting when we’re wrong. It’s worth overlooking offenses, extending forgiveness, accepting differences and learning from each other.
Who do you do life with?
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccl 4:9-10, 12).
This gift of community is priceless.
So today, I’m asking myself – how well am I contributing to the Body of Christ? Am I as willing to serve others as they have been to me? Am I pursuing growth and unity out of love for Jesus?
How about you? How are you doing? What community of believers do you do life with and how have you ministered to one another? I’d love to hear!
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Welcomed Home
I Shouldn’t Feel This Way
by MeredithNMills | Jul 15, 2015 | Uncategorized
Like dry, parched ground – that’s how my heart has felt lately.
It’s been a while since I blogged. The reason? I haven’t had much to say. I haven’t known what to write about.
Last weekend, I went to a Beth Moore conference and that’s when I realized how very parched my soul has been. I have been catching snippets of time with God, but honestly, I’ve been lazy in my pursuit of Him. During the conference, I was reminded of the magnetism of Jesus. He is relentlessly pursuing my heart, even when I’m not pursuing Him.
Beth talked about the concept of gravity, which she defined as “a force of attraction between two objects; that which pulls an object of lesser mass toward an object of greater mass.” She gave the following acronym to illustrate what she called “divine gravity” – God Revealing A Vast Intensity Toward You.
God, the far greater “mass,” is constantly pulling this lesser “mass” (me) toward Himself. How awesome is that? He doesn’t wait for me to initiate. He doesn’t demand that I meet Him halfway. His heart of vastly intense love never stops loving, never stops drawing. I am so grateful.
When I lived in a performance mindset, I was pretty disciplined in reading Scripture and in prayer. But I often did it because it was the right thing, the spiritual thing, to do. As God is setting me free from performance-based living, I’ve wrestled with the why behind what I am called to do. If all things are lawful for me in Christ (1 Cor 6:12, 10:23), if I am fully accepted in Him regardless of what I do (Rom 8:1), then what motivates me to seek and obey God? What should compel me to “discipline myself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim 4:7)? I’d like to take the next few blog posts to share what I’m learning on this subject.
We often think of eternal life as something we get when we die. But in reality, eternal life begins the moment we are born again through faith in Jesus. (“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” 1 Jn 5:11. And “…I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” Gal 2:19-20.)
When we come to faith in Christ, we are given more than “fire insurance,” more than a key to heaven, more than a future inheritance. We are adopted into a new family, with a Father who longs to relate to us.
To view salvation as simply a future event would be like a street child adopted by the richest man in town, who then continues to live on the streets, content with the promise of an inheritance. Or like a prostitute wooed, loved and wed, only to continue in her former occupation, knowing her husband’s wealth will one day be hers. How short-sighted, how vastly inferior, would such a life be!
Such are our lives if we do not walk in relationship with the God who has saved us. He has revealed Himself in His Word. He has deposited His Spirit into our hearts. He has invited us to His throne room. He holds out the offer of eternal, abundant life here and now. How much we miss if we do not throw ourselves into walking with Him!
I do not have to read my Bible or pray or abide in Him to keep being His child or make Him like me. But I do have to read the Word and pray and abide in Him to experience the life that He’s given me. His Word and His presence are the Source of spiritual life and freedom. As a plant needs sun, water and food to bear fruit, so I need the Light of the World, the Giver of living water, and the Bread of life to bear spiritual fruit. I cannot produce it on my own.
If you are God’s child, you were adopted into His family for the purpose of a relationship with Him. (If you’d like to know more about becoming His child, click here.) You are vastly loved, constantly pursued, and infinitely supplied by the God who gave His life to make you His own. His Word is not a book of rules, but your very life. In His presence is fullness of joy.
So let us press on to know Him more. Let us throw off the sin that masquerades as our life. Let us persevere in this walk of faith. How? By fixing our hearts’ eyes on Jesus – the Source, Sustainer and Sanctifier of our faith (Heb 12:1-2).
If Jesus is the Source of our daily eternal life, how does that affect you in the moment-by-moment dailyness of life?
