When Coffee just isn't enough

Yesterday I had the feeling, I need more coffee. I was heading off to "piddle" at lunch time, to look around at Lowe's, eat at Chickfila, and just have some down time... right, I need it. I got a call on the way out of the med center, that there was a referral awaiting surgery. A young lady from Arkansas, with 2 small children, getting ready to go into surgery. She is a new Christian, and her husband has been a Christian for some time. I hurried over, to see what I could do... or at least, see what the Lord could do. I got there to find the mother of the husband in the waiting room. We talked a little bit, and told her I would return and maybe her son would be around. She told me it would just be a hurry up and wait.

I was called up to another room to visit a man... I thought, and it ended up being a 10 yr old cancer patient, hopefully on his last round. He had got sick the last few days and came in. They have just moved from Florida to Houston, and were looking at placing membership when all this happened. The room was filled with kid stuff, which I almost started playing. Playstation, games, toys... everything to make the experience as "fun" as possible. But he was ready to go. As soon as I walked in, he asked are you here to let me go home? I talked to him mom for a while, just to give her a break from what was happening. She was working on recipes in the corner, had her journal pages laid out on the small table. I begin to fit together the puzzle pieces of a mom having her life interrupted with a sick child. The plans of you son that you have, not really what the Lord has in mind. Does that statement bother you? The Lord's plans?

We live in and live with a substance called the body. This body is physical, and is not perfect. Though there are medicines and treatments, and some cures.. the body will never be perfect. It is flawed, or cursed as was mentioned at church last night. And with that, comes sickness, illness, imperfections, colds, flu, and a fight to live. Our soul is made perfect in Jesus Christ. And that encouragement lends itself to strengthen the resolve of the seriously ill, and the hope in Jesus. Yesterday, I prayed with an older woman, and for the new bodies and refreshment we will receive in heaven, when all of this sickness is done away with. When God gives us a new body, a body without pain or tears or sickness or exhaustion or doubt. We will be complete.

But till then, bring on the coffee. Bring on the quiet talks, the anxious feelings of surgery, the doubts of what God's plans are, and how anything good can come of a mother dying of matasticizing cancer with 2 children under 3 years old. Bring on the friends of Jesus and the smiles he gives them to encourage and to be with those in need.

A presence in a time of loneliness is more powerful than a drop of rain in the desert, because its existence is not soaked up and used, but blossomed into new life.