Originally posted on Facebook on May 13, 2018
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all our Mothers!!! Where would we all be without our Mothers? Munch on THAT thought and let it sink in! 😉
My Mother prayed for me for decades as I wallowed in drug addiction and alcoholism and self serving sinful pursuits. She would send me these long letters about God and faith and the fallen state of the world. Curiously she would always bring up abortion. I seldom if ever answered her letters. But I know she was praying and crying out to God constantly for the perilous state of my soul.
One day I was meditating on a quote about prayer by the Puritan Theologian John Owen from about 1690. "It is not the glorious Battlements. It is not the crouching Gargoyles. It is not the stained windows that support a building but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. Often times it is those who are despised and trampled upon who bear up the weight of a whole Nation."
I don't know if I have an overactive imagination or what but as I was meditating on Owen's words it became abundantly clear that there are people-pleasing, famous, and wealthy ministers who's prayers mean less than nothing to God. And that sometimes things hinge almost solely on the prayers of the unknown and unrecognized and impoverished Faithful. At that point in my meditation I saw this ancient tiny woman setting in her chair and she was watching a broadcast on TV about the famine and drought in the horn of Africa. She then reaches and draws up her walker and slowly makes her way down the hallway to her bedroom. She gets her purse and pulls out her checkbook and writes a small check and makes it out to the ministry in the broadcast for their work in Africa. Then she kneels beside her bed to pray for a multiplication of her gift. When she kneels down to pray two angels stand up. They stand for two reasons. One is out of a deep respect for this ancient woman who has spent a Lifetime supporting ministries and needs like this in her unnoticed ways and countless prayers. The other reason they stand up is because they know that they are about to be sent on their way to Africa to make the clouds a little heavier with rain and the Crops a little more bountiful with their produce.
Then it occurred to me that the layout of this old Widows house is exactly like my Mother's. The television, her chair, the hallway leading to her bedroom. My mother would even keep her purse in her bedroom.
Then I understood this visual was about my Mother. I then wondered about the many many times I was a whiskers breadth from certain death over the years that I walked in darkness but my life was strangely spared. After I came to the Lord I filled up both sides of a sheet of paper recounting them. 13 of them. 13 is the # of rebellion in Scripture, but I was spared. I would have been in one heck of a pickle right now awaiting judgement had my days not been prolonged.
Happy Mother's Day Mama. I'm so sorry you didn't get to see me come to to the Lord and to my senses before you finished your race. Thank you for your countless Prayers. l love you Mama!!!