All was quiet in the Snyder house. I was just about to drift off to sleep when my eyes flew open and my spirit was convicted to pray for Tony. Tony was a friend – more of an acquaintance, actually – whom I hadn’t seen since he had moved a good six months earlier. But it was the middle of the night, and I was inclined to pray. So I did.
Tony’s face haunted me for more than a week, often at the most inconvenient times. I’d be guiding a string of preschoolers down the crowded hall of a church. “Pray.” I’d be fixing a late lunch for my siblings. “Pray.” I’d be lining up the perfect pool shot. “Pray.” Though I thought the persistent urge to pray was getting a tad bit ridiculous, I prayed.
A year later, I stumbled across Tony’s mom on facebook. I shot her a message to ask how life was going and part of her reply sent a holy tremor down my spine. Tony had been in an accident last June. June was the month I couldn’t get him off my mind.
It struck me that I could have been lying in bed praying for Tony the very night he rolled his truck. My frantic prayers could have empowered the angels who spared his life that night. I suddenly realized that the entire time I was praying, Tony was lying in a hospital bed, recovering from a near death experience.
Let me tell you, a message like that will make you think twice the next time God puts someone on your heart. So, of course, when I was unable to read the other night because I couldn’t get a certain face out of my mind, I set the book aside and began to pray. Though I may never know the reasons behind this particular prayer, I think of Tony… and how God divinely touches the hearts of His children when another is in need. And so I pray.
But the Bible isn’t meant to be a rulebook; it’s God’s love letter to His children. The words “Jesus loves you” aren’t merely lyrics to that first song you learned in Sunday school; they are a reality with the potential to turn your world upside down. It’s time to go back to the basics of Christianity and allow the marvelous truth of God’s love to break through our religious routine.
Ever since I read Shannon Kubiak Primicerio’s The Divine Dance, I’ve been enthralled by a dancing God. It’s the language God and I speak to each other. Still, I’ve always envisioned Jesus as a Carpenter. I think of the way He molds and shapes us into the image He envisioned us to be from the beginning. And I felt as if that image had just been placed in my hands, a permanent reminder of the person God is continually shaping me to be.
And while you may not ever see the fruit of your labor, you’re touching more people than you know.
For most of my life, my morning consisted of throwing on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, running a brush through my hair, looking in the mirror and saying, “Eh, God said that it was good.” Perhaps you would never look at me and think that I was insecure. After all, I never buried my flaws under a pile of make-up. But deep in my heart, the root of the problem was the same. I was never more than “good enough.” But then I wondered…
Because that’s where He beckons me with words all too similar to the ones Tinkerbell spoke to Peter Pan in Hook:
