When the God we serve, serves!

My aunt loved my dad’s chocolate chip cookies. One day, I was at her house while I was in middle school and she talked me into making them, thinking that my cookies would somehow taste better than hers, because I was my dad’s daughter. There was no recipe, so she rattled it off and into the kitchen I went. The result was runny, flat cookies. Nothing like my dad makes! Hmmm, not exactly what she was looking for! She laughed. She always laughed. It’s been 21 years and I still remember that laugh. Turns out, the verbal recipe given to me accidentally doubled the butter. Oops! At the time, I wanted to defend myself! It wasn’t my fault. I was given the wrong recipe! Now, I realize something. Even with the right recipe, it still wouldn’t have measured up because nobody made chocolate chip cookies like Danny.

Today, marks 21 years since my aunt went home to be with the Lord after a lifelong battle with cancer. As I was engrossed in spreadsheets at work, her daughter, my cousin, reached out to me naming her struggle. 21 years doesn’t make the gaping hole of death go away, especially when that person was your mom. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I wanted her to know that I saw her and that I heard her and that I wanted to meet her where she is at, but I was fearful. I wasn’t sure I could. I wanted to mourn with her. I wanted to comfort her. I did not want to pump her full of trite phrases and useless platitudes. Why is our first reaction always about ourselves? God, I am not equipped to meet her in this place. I don’t know what mourning the loss of your mother feels like. As I considered how to respond, the words of the song playing through my headphones struck me. “Just be held. I’m painting beauty with the ashes” from Casting Crowns song, “Just be Held”. With a lack knowing what to say, I told her that I don’t have any words, but that my prayer for her today is that she is held and that God paints beauty with the ashes.

Isaiah 61:3 To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory.

I’ve already seen the beauty in action in her life and God isn’t even done with her or her sister yet. My aunt was a model of quiet dignity and taking the awful, heart-wrenching deliveries of life and facing them in God’s power and I see that legacy passed down to her daughters. That, in the pain and the hardship, they have endured being upheld in God the Father.

What I received back today was a most precious gift that still leaves me a bit speechless. Without my knowledge, God has already used this song in her story to bring her comfort and peace in the hard. You see, while not spelled the same, her last name is pronounced ash. I wasn’t clever enough to put it together, but God most certainly is. He used the precise moment that I was listening to the song to utter them to her. I thought my words fell so short of what I longed them to be, and God ensured that they were precisely the words needed to pierce her soul, and in turn, he pierced mine, the soul of the one who uttered the words.

God could have chosen any number of means and methods to speak truth and encouragement into her heart today. He certainly didn’t need me. He allowed me the honor and privilege to connect with her and mourn with her and blessed ME beyond comprehension. In my last blog post, "The Co-Existence of Rest and Doing Work for God", I spoke about God not needing me to be anything other than He made me to be. How He handled hearts, location and coordination, that all I needed to do was move when God directs me to move and to be available with a heart that longs to be used. Today, God showed me that I don’t even need to do that. When we serve a God who serves, there is absolutely nothing he needs from us, not even for us to show up. He desires hearts who are willing, but he does not need them.

Quite outside of my maneuverings or scheming’s, while holed away, by myself, in my office, God worked and blessed me by allowing me to witness his hand in the little details, showing that he is a God who sees and that he is a God who comforts, and he gave me the privilege to play a part in it.