When God uses Mickey Mouse bedding.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been basically bed bound ( or chair bound) due to the extreme pain in my legs. Some of you know, and some may not, that I was in a pretty catastrophic car accident when I was younger, and I broke almost every bone from the waist down. I have ever since dealt with chronic pain. I have better days and worse days... but the past few weeks have been extremely difficult. My “get up and go” has been reduced to emails and phone calls (I know your can all relate... now picture your “stay at home” order turned into “stay in that room, in that chair”). I have taken to social media and the CarePortal platform with intensity from my seated position. Haha
Last week, I spoke with a sweet momma about getting her son a bed. Our church received a donation and I could meet that need from my armchair. I prayed with her and then asked (since Iwas purchasing directly from the store) about her son’s favorites saying
“God cares about the details too!"
He loves blue. He loves cars and he's crazy about Mickey Mouse. I hung up the phone and started shopping. When I found BLUE bedding set, with Mickey Mouse ...IN A RACE CAR...my heart skipped a beat! I immediately texted the mom, her caseworker and the church member who donated the funds with a quick “YAY, God” and a picture of the cute bedding. That text resulted in an all day, back and forth, group conversation about the goodness of God that connected 4 perfect strangers through praise! That tiny gesture gave all of us the little victory we needed for the day!
Recently I was reading the transcript from a Q&A session with Billy Graham... this question stood out:
I’m about to give up trying to help people in our community who are in need. They’re never very grateful for what our church does for them, and anyway it doesn’t seem to change anything. Why should we bother? This answer from Billy Graham was profound and encouraging.
"I know it can be discouraging to try to help people who aren’t grateful. It also can be distracting to look at all the needs in the world, and realize that you aren’t going to be able to make much of an impact , no matter how hard you try. But God didn’t call us to be successful; He called us instead to be faithful - even in the face of great difficulty or indifference. {i would add here: even in the face of failure ...even in the face of personal struggle.}
Instead of focusing on what you can't accomplish, focus on what you are accomplishing. Even if most people don’t seem to be grateful, you have still helped them. {I’d like to interject that even if these small acts don’t SOLVE poverty or radically improve society... you have touched families} . Learn to thank God for small victories! Do you remember Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep? Only one lost sheep was found - but Jesus said there would be “rejoicing in heaven over that ONE” (Luke 15:7).
This week, I’ve been sitting in my chair, under a cloud of that GRACE, choosing to rejoice over the thing I DID accomplish instead of listing the things I can't. I'm hearing God speak over us, “If we can only remain faithful, even if we accomplish little else, He will delight in us”. If he can gain glory from blue, Mickey Mouse, race car bedding, He can certainly use whatever small thing we each have in our hands and hearts to serve with! He doesn’t expect ANYTHING more than faithful service from surrendered hearts. That is our real battle AND our ultimate victory!
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