Over the last two weeks I have had different opportunities to visit with several old friends. Oops! Did I say they were old? Well, I meant our friendship is old. To look at these beautiful spiritual sisters you would think that to go back nearly 20 years together, we must have been friends in the cradle, although that is far from the case.
Careers and callings have taken us apart from each other's daily lives but summer vacations brought each of them back into my life for a short season. They each have children the same age as mine; we joyously discovered time has brought us to a point where the little ones don't require constant supervision. They are more than happy to run and play uninterrupted. That left us with time to talk and reconnect on a more adult level than we knew decades ago.
Careers and callings have taken us apart from each other's daily lives but summer vacations brought each of them back into my life for a short season. They each have children the same age as mine; we joyously discovered time has brought us to a point where the little ones don't require constant supervision. They are more than happy to run and play uninterrupted. That left us with time to talk and reconnect on a more adult level than we knew decades ago.
My first sister and I sat at the kitchen table in the mornings, each with coffee in hand. Another sister and I shared across the front seat of a minivan while our husbands piloted another minivan behind us. (At least it started that way - you know men, they had to pass us at the first opportunity.) A third sister and I caught up with each other late into the night, curled up in the living room, her in an overstuffed chair and me at one end of a couch. A fourth sister and I even stood under the back hatch of her mini-van, in the middle of a rainstorm, while my daughter played softball in the mud a few yards away.
War - physical and spiritual. Drug lords. Violent crimes. Generational bondage. Societal deterioration. Corporate buy-outs. Job layoffs. Intercontinental job transfers. Childhood behavioral disorders. Alcoholism. Homosexuality.
As each shared her heart with me, I began to wonder if God was trying to teach me something by bringing each of these women into my life over such a short amount of time. I've never lived in a war-torn country or helped fight a battle of alcoholism. I've encountered the effects of a deteriorating society and coped with childhood behavioral problems but I'm not sure I was successful with either.
The thing about God, though, is His principles are timeless and boundless. Go beyond the cliché and listen to the truth of God's words -
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
“Whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”
Proverbs 1:33
These and many other verses from Scripture remind us that God is powerful, eternal, constant, and gracious. Those are life-altering truths in this tumultuous, shifting world.
Very true... life is not all a big random salad tossed together. God's Word says in Jeremiah "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;" As we walk in this life, every person we meet every thought or remembrance that crosses our minds..is not an accident :) What you do with the opportunity God has lead you to, is where you are defined as 'His child.' Are we in the 30 fold, the 60 fold or the 100?
ReplyDeleteKathi! Congratulations on all your new endeavors! Looking forward to reading your thoughts.
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