I’m sitting in our front room hoping for a few moments of quiet before the dinner hour rush begins. The snow is gently falling outside quietly covering our home in a new layer of pristine white snow.
It’s warm inside. For the first time in a few days the children are playing quietly, and I am overwhelmed by God’s grace.
Merely twelve short days ago, we rushed a very feverish, listless Evangeline to the hospital. The doctor on the phone told us we may not make it in time and advised us to call 911. Even now I wonder at my decision to drive her into the city, but I was compelled to have her admitted at CHOP where so many already knew about her very special, very tiny body.
Today she is full of life.
It all seems so unreal. Last week she hovered dangerously close to death; this week she is laughing and bubbly and incredibly alive.
Evangeline’s life has been redeemed, again.
Somehow in the process of walking this road with Evangeline, I have grown more acutely aware of how tenuous the line between life and death really is for all of us, and how at any given moment we hover just beyond Death’s grasp.
It is not only Evangeline’s life that hovered in the balance between life and death last week; it was all of ours as well.
Every single day we are graciously upheld by God’s loving arms. At any moment He could withdraw His arms, and we would pass from this world to the next.
He alone makes our hearts beat.
He alone sustains us.
Life on this earth is precious and will not last forever, not for Evangeline and not for us. Our time here is so very short.
It is only by God’s grace that we live and breathe and have our being. (Acts 17:28)
We have today, this moment, but we have no promise of tomorrow.
Somehow with this heightened awareness of how temporal our physical lives really are, I have a keener appreciation for God’s miraculous grace and a more gripping desire to do His work while there is still time.
As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. ~John 9:4
I feel such a sense of urgency to make today count.
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ~LUKE 10:2
I have been keenly aware of how precious life is, but somehow I know it more now.
God has broken my heart for the fatherless and the children trapped in child slavery. God is sustaining their exhausted, weary bodies until the Body of Christ arrives to take them home.
But I wonder. Are we coming?
Or will their eyes close in death before we arrive, never having known the tender love of an earthly mother and father?
My prayer is that we would all move closer each day to an awareness of the fragility of life, that we would see beyond these earthly trappings, that we would become one with our eternal Father, that our desires would be His, that we would come to see ourselves as eternal and that every choice we make would reflect that awareness.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ~Matthew 6:19-21
Our time is short.
The harvest is ready.
Lord, send workers into the field to redeem the children.
Use me in whatever way you choose.
I stand with Isaiah.
Here am I , Lord. Send me!
Will you join me?
Blessings!
Yes, I will absolutely join you!
Chris Lessly recently posted..Home From Africa….Sisters Meet…and LOVE
Praying for you, Chris, and am so excited to see what God does!
I’d love to read your thoughts on bringing home 2 at once. We have 7 bio kids, one from China, are matched with one, and are waiting for a second referral, hoping to go back to China for lil sis and lil bro in May or June.
Shecki recently posted..Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up Saudi Arabia week 2