Shutting the door on my little finger as I was let my dog back in the house in the middle of the night, I felt a jolt of pain that shot from my little finger, and then the throbbing began as I assessed the extent of the pain. As I flexed my finger a few times, I decided it likely wasn’t broken, but it started to swell immediately and hurt quite a bit for being such a little accidental crushing of such a small finger.
Whether big or small, accidents happen quickly and without warning, with lessons to learn as we ask why. God has so much to reveal to us every day if we let him, and I have learned that the more I focus on what he is trying to show me about the world around me, the more I see. The lessons and opportunities to learn are never ending, and I am convinced I’ll never run out of things to write about as long as I’m walking with Jesus, because he has a lot to show those that will listen.
Recently, I have been blessed with lessons learned from an elderly man that I have begun spending a few hours as a caretaker to on some weekend mornings. He greets me with smiles from the moment that he awakens and calls me one of his angels that wake him up in the morning. He’s always thankful for the arrival of a new day, laughs about how the sandman puts sand and sometimes rocks in his eyes overnight, and he perseveres to meet the physical challenges of simply getting out of bed, walking with a walker and slowly managing his daily tasks with the assistance from others. He meets the daily physical challenges common to many elderly people with an incredible optimism and determination that inspires me to be more like him. Even though I have only spent a few mornings with him so far, I already see how God is working through him to bless me, and hopefully through me to be a blessing to him. This is the way that things are supposed to work in the Kingdom, and it’s so freeing to be able to get to fill roles like this that spark my spirit and give me purpose.
As I’ve met members of his loving family who are doing so much to help him stay in his farmplace home as he ages, I am touched by the love and deep faith that his family lives by every day. I felt led to respond to the ad that I saw in the local paper a couple of weeks in a row, even though reading the classifieds and applying for a job were completely out of character for me. When I texted about it, they said they no longer needed help but kept my information and reached out to me later that there was an opening in the schedule. What a blessing it is to simply listen to Jesus and follow the promptings of someone so much greater than ourselves with Holy Spirit’s continual presence, and I count myself as blessed to be a part of the Church, with brothers and sisters in Christ showing up everywhere I go.
With my finger still throbbing, Jesus is teaching me lessons about accidents and time. The elderly man with Jesus in his heart that I’ve been watching had fallen on the concrete outside just a couple days before, and he was getting around much slower than the last time that I saw him. Every step seemed painful and slow, and all that I could do was stand behind him and hope that he would be able to complete his daily walk to the kitchen from his bedroom. But even with a swollen and nearly useless hand, scraped knees, leg muscles that were bruised and extra sore, he had the same positive determination to walk on his own, step by step, taking pauses as he needed. Because of his faith in God’s plan and viewing the people who compassionately care for him as blessings to him, he didn’t suffer from a bruised ego or bitterness, but rather was able to do Kingdom work and teach me a lesson in humility. He modeled what it means to surrender to God’s will with grace and how to be a shining light to reveal Jesus to others.
Accidents happen without warning, and there isn’t a way to start over and attempt a different outcome. Whether falling on concrete or slamming a finger in the door, we must face the reality of our situation. God gave us complete free will, though, and this is where our individual perspectives, personality, and resilience reveal themselves. How we respond to any situation is completely up to us, and each person is created with that same opportunity. In times of crisis and pain, layers of past experiences, beliefs in ourselves and others, hope for the future, and aspects of our individual personalities reveal themselves.
Shifting to another person that I learned a lesson about time from the other day, I was talking to a man I have known for about 35 years but hadn’t seen in quite awhile. He was telling me that he is agnostic as I was telling him about some of the things that Jesus has done recently in my life. An agnostic is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.” Interestingly, he told me how good it is that I’m talking about my faith so much now and that we need to have more people in this world doing that.
One of the things he shared is how he has seen that people often begin to have a deeper faith in God when they reach “rock bottom” in their life. His reasoning for not choosing Christianity is that he hasn’t reached rock bottom yet, so he doesn’t want to go the route of talking to God and putting his trust in him.
I could feel God’s love for him, but all I could do was give him a hug, smiles, and some of my time, and then trust that I had done what I was called to do by sewing a few seeds of God’s eternal love and grace in his heart. As of today, that man isn’t ready to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior yet, and God doesn’t bang down the door to our heart, he simply knocks and leaves the timing of opening the door up to us.
It’s hard to navigate living in this world of humans that are on such a wide spectrum of belief when we know the freedom of a faith that is completely surrendered to a Heavenly Father of love and peace. On a daily basis, I have an overwhelming compulsion to talk to people, to connect to them wherever they’re at emotionally, and to reveal Jesus to them. Some hearts are hard, angry, bitter, or entitled. Some people seem confused, lost, or stuck. Others have deeper stories or are open to wanting to know more, and some share deep wisdom from Holy Spirit that resonates with me and grows me in my Christian faith.
Sharing stories, getting to know others, and guiding each other in faith is all part of God’s plan, and I feel so blessed to be a part of it now that I am aware of how Christ’s Church grows and nurtures one another in a much bigger way than anything else we can experience here and now on earth.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 ESV
But I can’t help thinking about time and accidents, and my friend who says he hasn’t reached rock bottom yet. While I understand that it was reaching my own personal rock bottom that changed my life as I handed everything I was over to God, I also know that we never know how much time we’ll have, and I just as easily could’ve pulled the trigger and put an end to the amount of time that I had in this life. I had a lifetime of believing that Jesus had died for my sins and trying to live a life of righteousness, kindness, and generosity, and yet it still took something major for me to finally surrender it all to him, which changed everything for me.
Time — Knowing that all I have any control over is what I choose to do right here and right now is both simpler to comprehend and kind of scary. I used to think that I had to earn my way into heaven by doing enough good things in life, and time escaped through my fingers like sand for decades of my life as I strived to “do enough.” I often wondered if when my time on earth reached its end, would I be notable enough to Jesus for him to let me into heaven? Would I be memorable enough to people on earth that they would remember the little things I had done for people?
Time to me now is more like a moment on a clock. God’s timing is perfect, and I don’t have to strive to do enough or be enough if I just trust in his perfect ways. I am blown away by the peace that I feel when I make an intentional choice to live with a heart and life that is open to being available to Jesus. I have the best conversations with people, receive amazing blessings, live with such freedom and joy, and develop my understanding about who I was created to be. I am now learning to love and be loved, breaking unhealthy generational patterns, and feeling purpose in making a difference in the world.
We never know how much time we have, and what I know now is that the only time that really matters is right now. I will live the best way that I know how to live right now, and when I make a mistake, I will repent, turn it over to Jesus, and learn from the lesson I was blessed to have time to experience. Everyone’s lifetime is made up of lessons, and learning happens every day if we let it.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25-34 NIV