God Loves Me

(This is still on the subject of the post below. The information is "sensitive" so I can not disclose the news just yet, but I will be able to later this evening when all the people involved are notified.)

At church today, after having missed it for a good month due to work, I was reminded about how Jesus loves us through others. The people in my SaLT group have been praying incessantly for me, for a good year, and most intensely during the past few months.

One particular sister in Christ is Miss Katherine. She is a frail, elderly woman who we have all grown attached to, and watch over her as best we can. She hobbles around with her cane and requires help with opening doors, climbing the three steps to our SaLT group gathering, and could use a warm campfire in The Gathering Place (our house of worship) when the AC is blowing like a blizzard and keeping a chill in the air...which, for the rest of us, is usually welcome in the warm climate of Tennessee. She is a sweetheart, and very soft-spoken. She sits quietly during our discussions in SaLT group, and rarely has anything to add. (Let me tell you though...the few times she has spoken up have been profound!)

We have learned over the years of knowing Miss Katherine, that her spiritual gift is prayer. We are all sure to ask Miss Katherine to pray for us when we need it. She is one of the first I go to when I need prayer. I trust Miss Katherine to go to the Lord on my behalf.

Today when I shared my news...Miss Katherine smiled a huge ear to ear smile through tears of joy and celebration.

She rejoiced and grabbed my hand and offered a short word of encouragement, and at the same time she was giving all the glory to God for answered prayer.

At that moment, when she looked in my eyes, I realized the significance of the love and the attention she had given to my need. She carried my burden and spent countless minutes, hours going to the Lord for me.

It was then that I also realized that what I was seeing in the eyes of Miss Katherine was the love of Christ. Christ also revealed something else. You see, I saw not only Miss Katherine, but my mom and dad too, whom I know to have been in prayer for me as well. (I wish they weren't so far away) It dawned on me that people cared for me, and that they had taken my burden seriously and have been praying for me! I suddenly felt a rush of, oh...it's hard to describe. Let's just say at that moment I felt so loved. I understood in that moment that God has surrounded me with family and with friends who care so deeply for me. I mean, this is stuff that I already know, but what I'm telling you now, is that I FELT that. I felt it right then.

It all happened in only a moment. The time it takes to look into the eyes of someone who said "I've prayed so hard for you."

And...it is not just the fact that the prayers have been answered as I had hoped...as everyone had hoped, but simply that today I was reminded that God loves me. He put people around me that love me. Nothing else really matters.

Even if those prayers had not been answered as I had hoped, God loves me.