Because That's What Faithfulness Does

I first noticed a bag of carrots covered in ice crystals in the vegetable bin of our refrigerator. I tried to ignore the refrigerator's obvious malfunction, hoping that somehow it was just a temporary glitch.

But within a few days, well, now the shredded cheese in an adjacent bin was also hard as a rock.  We tried our usual fix-it method:  Turn the appliance off and start it up again.  No change. 

I called the local repair shop, and a few days later, the technician Tim arrived. He did what the faithful do. He sized up the problem and got to work.  But there was something different here.  This did not seem like just another repair job for him.  He seemed to have a joy in doing the work, not having to do it but getting to do it.  As it turns out, he has been repairing refrigerators since 1988.  Just helping others in time of desperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He took out all the shelves and drawers.  He worked on his hands and knees for almost three hours. From time to time, I could hear chunks of ice shattering. But he stuck with it, found the problem, and replaced the broken part.

In our culture, we talk a lot about calling.  Tim's calling was not to repair refrigerators -- although he was really good at it -- but called to serve and help others in their time of need.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.  Hebrews 4. 16

May we be so mindful.  Not just aware of a problem, but also not ignoring what is before us. Doing something about it, not out of obligation, or not to earn someone's favor, or to be the hero, but out of the sheer joy of helping when we can and how we can.  We may not be able to do everything, but we can do something.  And first, to pray. Sometimes serving is just being there, being faithful to the work, and having a happy heart.  That kind of faithfulness is never without a witness for the God we love.

Images of the saints of old were recognized by what they held in their hands.  What do we hold in ours?  Tools in our toolbox to serve others.  When a friend's 18-year-old car needed replacing, she chose a small pickup truck, because it gave her delight in being able to serve others even more. The faithful to Jesus have always been marked not just by carrying a towel and basin (John 13. 4-5), but willingly using them, even in unrecognized ways. 

The faithful stuff is never insignificant. Faithfulness to what God has placed before us changes the world, even if it is fixing one refrigerator at a time.  During Covid, the media identified these quiet servants as "essential workers."  In her lifetime, my mom always acknowledged the mostly invisible battalions around her.  I can still hear her saying to the stock boy at the grocery or the women cleaning the bathrooms at a restaurant, "Thank you for your work."  She let them know she saw them and recognized their profound work. The faithful are watchful and attentive.

"We cannot ascertain what is valuable in God’s sight, nor what He can redeem," writes British author and pastor Rico Tice.

The faithful put down their heads and just do it.  Because they have an inner joy, far deeper than the task at hand.  Would you do this for Me?  

It may not be anything that others see, but knowing God is using it profoundly, beyond our understanding, out of sight, on the far side of words.  That's what faithfulness looks like. 

God uses the most unlikely among us to accomplish the most unexpected.  We can never know the reverberations of a needful act of grace.  There are no small kindnesses.  The awareness to be kind builds one layer upon another.  

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much... Luke 16. 10 

That is what I witnessed in my kitchen.  One who took delight in faithful work.  

May we all leave that imprint.

 

 

Grand Expeditions -- Inktober 24 #expedition

I perused my list, preparing for a pending expedition, curating and packing food and snacks. And then some extras, in case of emergency. You can never bring enough. Water bottles, filled to the brim. And a couple spares. No water available where we are headed.  Long sleeves and jackets for the cold. Rain jackets for the inevitable. Shoes that are made for long days on the trail.  Sunscreen.  Ball caps. Hand sanitizer.  Perhaps the kitchen sink as well.  I know I'm forgetting something.

An expedition is defined as a journey or voyage undertaken by a group of people for a particular purpose, especially that for exploration or scientific research, requiring preparation and supplies.  The Shackleton exploration to the Antarctic in 1914-1917 comes to mind.

I was preparing not for a treacherous exploration of the Amazon jungle.  Nor a team scaling Everest. Nor a forty-year exodus, wandering in the desert. But for this particular day, I was taking grandchildren to the zoo. That is always an expedition, always into the wild.  Always an adventure. Always a loaded backpack.

We can't outguess every contingency, but we can still prepare for what we do know.

Time in God's Word, praying and worshiping Him prepares us to walk differently into the day, whatever is on our path.  God brings His strength, wisdom and even the snacks to keep us on our wildest journeys.  

... drawing near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.  Hebrews 4. 16

Wherever God guides, He provides in ways we never expect,  think we don't need, or sometimes just letting us know He is still with us.  And we find a little forgotten proverbial protein bar in the bottom of the pack that saves the day.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4.19

No Restrictions. No Expiration Date.

 

During the years of World War 2, Corrie ten Boom and her family hid about 800 Jewish people in their home. They were imprisoned for their resistance activities. Only Corrie survived.  After the war, this elderly Dutch watchmaker faithfully testified about God and her experience as a concentration camp survivor.

In an old wobbly broadcast I found on YouTube, Corrie then in her 80s spoke about meeting an older gentleman who came to one of her talks, three decades after the war, having recognized the name ten Boom. 

 “I had a teacher named ten Boom when I was seven.  Was that you?”  he asked her.

“No,” she replied.  “That was my older sister.”   

“Well, I was in her class,” the white-haired man said.

And suddenly Corrie remembered when she was about twelve or thirteen, her older sister Betsie taught school in their hometown of Haarlem in the Netherlands.  Betsie came home at night, and asked her family to pray for her class of seven and eight year old boys and girls, not for better behavior or doing their schoolwork, but for their spiritual well-being.  And now, seventy years later, here was one of those little boys with all those prayers from so long ago still sticking to him.  God was still drawing that seven-year-old boy to Himself.

We all-too-often shortchange the act of praying.  Prayer is not limited to immediate requests nor to what we consider timely answers. Once committed to prayer, God’s responses continue to pour in.

Praying creates a space, not just for God to work, but for us to understand that He is unfolding His purposes.  And when we come before Him to pray, we cannot even number His wonders in unlikely places and unexpected ways, even in matters we cannot yet see -- maybe especially in what we cannot yet see. We have no idea what sticks – or to whom. 

My husband often uses a product called tenacious tape to repair damaged outdoor gear.  That strong adhesive sticks and adheres to basically about anything, grasping tightly, holding the rips and wounds together, avoiding further damage, and not readily relinquishing its grip.  What if we prayed like that?

Tenacious prayer does not stubbornly insist on its own way -- telling God how and when to answer -- adhering not to circumstances but aligning our hearts to His.  Sticky prayers change us in the very process of praying.  Our hearts are not stuck on a certain outcome or answer.  But realizing  the Almighty has a firm hold on us, far beyond our lifetimes, impacting even those yet unborn who come after us.  God is not about to let go.  Our prayers are not tenacious.  But God is.

Tenacity is an outward form of God's faithfulness.

Seventy years had passed, prayers long forgotten, but in that very moment, Corrie remembered holding hands with her family, praying nightly for children they mostly didn't know.  And now, an answer to her family's prayers was standing in front of her, in flesh and blood.  On the surface, it appeared that it took a long time for him to get there.  But not really. Prayer comes with no restrictions and no expiration date.  God is right on time.  He always is, even when we don't realize it.  He is not the one who forgets.

Would we pray differently if we knew our prayers would be yet reverberating seventy years from now, or even lingering long after we have forgotten what we prayed about?   It is not that those prayers have gone unanswered, but are not yet completed.

The other day while running in the woods, I was visually captured by the fresh green of spring all around me.  Many bushes along the path were covered in tightly-wrapped buds, standing straight and upright at attention, as if waiting for a signal to bloom.  It was not time yet.  Like so many prayers, their beauty and fragrance were ready and waiting to burst forth.  But not just yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Almighty unfolds His wonders, unrestricted by our meager vocabulary, not limited by time, but set into motion for all eternity, backwards and forwards, upside down and right-side up, immensely beyond our understanding, vision, or lifetimes.   

In prayer, God invites us into His marvelous, creative and sovereign work.  We adhere our prayers to His will --that which we comprehend and that which we cannot.  He does the heavy-lifting.  God completes our prayers in unexpected ways.  God glues together the prayers of the saints – even yours and mine—over the scope of all eternity.

With what are we coming before Him today-- seventy years in the making?

But for You, O LORD, do I wait;  

it is You, O Lord my God, who will answer.  

                               Psalm 38. 15