When you’re going through difficult times, friends and family can provide such good medicine! How grateful we’ve been for a ribbon wrapped grocery bag full of provisions of thoughtfullness, a box filled with homecooked goodies and a plate of cookies left at our front door. The wrapped pointsettia sitting on the doorstep, text messages of love and concern, funny caring cards, the phone calls, “What do you need? What can I do?” It’s interesting that the needing and doing have been done even just in the words of the text or the voice on the phone. We have felt loved, cared and provided for.
Outreach. Fellowship. Compassion. Provision…Definitions of love in action. Jesus answered the important question like this, ”’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” Luke 10:27. It seems that loving God with all you have translates into loving others as you would wish to be loved. It may not require doing a thing other than praying a heartfelt prayer of intercession asking God to do what only He can do. But when the Lord lays thoughts of someone in our mind, we should trust He has a call for us to make, an email to send or a mission to accomplish. We are, after all the hands and feet of Jesus.
Lord, before anything else, I thank You that You are as close as your whispered name. We are grateful for your presence when life is uncertain and challenging. Even when we feel unprepared for our circumstances, we know nothing is a surpise to you. And You walk with us, often carrying us as we soldier on. Help us to remember even as we struggle, that others are hurting and may need a touch from us. And keep our eyes focused on You, Lord. You are our strength and our shield.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” Colossians 3:12-14
Prayers and Paintbrushes 