| One Sunday morning my alarm clock went off. It was my prayer team’s day to do prayer ministry. I hadn’t felt well in the night and was still feeling sick. I hit the sleep button on the clock and wrestled with the idea of getting up and going, or staying home and resting. The alarm went again. I hit the sleep button again. I thought about the couple who are on my prayer team previously saying they may not be there because they are hosting a family from Ethiopia in their home for the weekend. They host a lot of families that are traveling from Africa. The wife, a quiet, gentle, God-loving woman who has been given a mission door into the heart of Africa and her husband, a retired pediatrician, reach out in ways no one would assume if you saw them. My Mom is on the prayer team too, and she was vacationing in Florida so she wouldn’t be there, but she had made efforts for a substitute in her place. I laid there thinking there may not be anyone to pray. Substitutes don’t always make it in. The alarm went off again. I hit sleep. This time I thought, “I can pray from bed.” So, I did. As I lay there praying, the guilt of not being at church and the possibility of no one being there to do prayer ministry gnawed at me. This time, when the alarm sounded I got up. I arrived and walked down the hall at church to the prayer room, having already missed one of the services. I saw my doctor friend. He was standing in the door and razzed me for coming in half-way through. I jokingly told him, “I needed a doctor!” I was surprised to see him and thought he must have chosen to hold to the commitment of prayer, while his wife cared for their visitors elsewhere. He assured me that they had enough people that came to do prayer ministry and that I would not have to stay. But, he said that his wife was in church and she told him that she wanted me to meet their guests and to have me look for them if he saw me. I was about to go and look and one of the other prayer people came in. She asked where I had been and I shared I hadn’t felt well, but that I felt worse for not coming. She instantly prayed for me to be well and so too, came the Doctor friend praying for me and the health of my family. I did begin to feel a bit better. He told me to hurry and find his wife and there were only five minutes left for me to do so before the next service started. I did find them all the way from Ethiopia. Their little girls were dressed in bright, colorful dresses with puffed out ruffled skirts and beautifully braided hair. Their shoes looked like new and were bright white running shoes with neon colored stripes on them. Their ankle socks were just as white against their beautiful brown skin. They were like a bouquet of flowers. The tiniest one held up a leaf on a popsicle stick that she had colored in Sunday school. Her leaf was the perfect accompaniment to her floral self. They were darling. Their Mom was beautiful and she greeted me with a kind and polite smile as she looked to her host for direction in the meeting. There was a bit of nervousness in her manner, too. Her husband greeted me also with politeness and my friend insisted I continue to walk with them and meet their sons. They were tall, young men that appeared years older than their actual age. Teenagers leaning against the wall like any other teenager. My friend began to tell me quickly in just a few sentences that the wife’s brother had just been placed in prison the day before. He and 51 other people were imprisoned by another tribe because some of them had been translating the Bible. I then recognized the look on her face. What I had thought was nervousness in meeting me was the underlying concern for her brother and the others. This was foremost on her heart. She had politely brought a smile up to her face when she met me, but her heart was carrying a far greater concern. Then my friend told me that her husband, who is a pastor in Ethiopia, had been working under a church denomination and had some protection under that, but in his time in America, he learned that the denomination was not holding to the Word of God as they do in Africa. He had just made the decision to hold to God’s Word and left the protection of a denomination who did not believe as he did. I saw in him the grief he carried for the falling away that he had been witness to. He was mourning over this loss. He stood out as one who would not bow down as all the others would and had. His height emphasized that sense to my heart and I also saw the reality of his concern for now being unprotected by a denomination of people and title and what he was about to return to with so many now in prison. He was standing in the righteousness of Christ and His Word at whatever cost it may be to him. In the brief moments of the information given to me and the sudden light into their heartache, I began to pray out loud for them. It was all I could do. I was helpless. I closed my eyes and held my hands out towards them. I don’t even remember what all I prayed except for God’s help, hand, peace, freedom and covering. I finished praying and opened my eyes. They stood there with their eyes still shut. She stood still and then opened her eyes. She had tears. I looked to him and he left an impression on me that I will live with for the rest of my life. He stood tall but weak beneath the most pure and beautiful humility I have ever seen on a man. He stood with his arms held out and his hands opened up to receive any of what God could give to him in his hour of sheer vulnerability and the unknown ahead for him. He lingered there in prayer and the presence of God. He had peace on his face with eyes closed and his face tipped up toward the LORD. He stood as humble and bravely as a Daniel before the LORD in his dedication and love for all He is to him. His love for his Savior was greater than any love he had for himself. I saw a man, not knowing what will be, but knowing what is true. His family around him: sons who would see his bravery, daughters who would see his gentle strength and a wife that would be led through this hardship by a man who serves the LORD with all of himself. That day in my own neighborhood, where I almost let a little bit of sickness keep me in bed, was a day that had more in God’s plan than I could have ever imagined could be. I prayed one prayer that day at church. But what I received was a lasting impression on my heart for people who are enduring persecution for the Word of God. My heart was broken that day, broken from out of its calloused, media infused reports to face ones, whose eyes I got to look into in their hour of pain over the real persecution in their lives that they would be flying back to that afternoon. While people, families unaware, and happily moving past us from Sunday school to church and a pancake breakfast and then onto whatever they had planned that afternoon. Me, I had to work that afternoon and hold a house open for people who were shopping for a new home. It all was trivial now. The depth of life is life itself in the One Who created us all. To Him be honor and praise. Revelation 7:11-13 ESV 11And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 13Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” |
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