Thursday, April 4, 2019
If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare. All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ. But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News. I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here. And I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon. Philippians 2:19-24
Elizabeth
and I have had a somewhat strained relationship with yellow jackets. When I had just entered my teens one summer, I
was assisting my dad by climbing up in the oak tree near our house to cut down
a dead branch that was hanging by a thread.
As I chopped-away at the dead wood the yellow jackets objected; the
swarm attacked and when I jumped out of the tree, my dad said he couldn’t see
my face, only yellow and black…and stingers!
I got stung over 100 times on my head and neck. In 10 minutes I couldn’t breathe, because bee
venom makes you swell…on the inside as well as the outside. My air passage was closing. Fortunately, we lived only a few miles from
our doctor, and he saved my hide with an injection (that was the only sharp
point I appreciated that day!).
Fast
forward a half-century to another back yard.
Elizabeth is raking up the pine needles around our cherry tree, and the North
Carolina yellow jackets weren’t any more hospitable than those of my New York
youth. She only got stung by a couple of them, but the signs of a severe reaction came rushing on her like a
tsunami. Within about 30 seconds my
bride was unconscious, collapsed on the kitchen floor and I was injecting her
with anti-venom while dialing 911. The
ER doctor told us we made it by not more than a couple of minutes.
For the last
several years Elizabeth has been carrying her epi-pen, and Russell knows where
it is! She has also been undergoing
venom therapy to develop a stronger immunity to the little mayhem bringers. In retrospect, having had the same kind of
episode in my youth made me more alert to the danger Elizabeth faced. It made me more able to understand what was
happening and act quickly when she couldn’t help herself.
I think
God does that a lot, preparing us in our difficult times for times when others
need us. I believe that is the
definition of ministry – bringing what’s needed to the table. If my experience at the wrong end of 100
yellow jackets hadn’t taken place, my wife suffering a few stings wouldn’t have
stirred the kind of alarm needed to act.
This is
how I see Paul’s life of hardship and opposition. The beatings, imprisonments, and opposition to
spreading the Good News prepared this Apostle with the kind of compassionate
heart he needed to minister to the church at Philippi, even from prison!
Paul
understood, because of his hardship, the kind of person he needed to send to
comfort the people who were worried about him.
Paul entrusted Timothy to be the shepherd to the Philippian believers,
because he had worked long and hard with Timothy, and seen how the young man
had developed a heart for ministry.
For You Today
Take a few
moments to think about some of the difficulties you’ve faced. Then imagine how God has prepared you to be a
minister to those who might be facing the same challenges, and how your
difficulties will give you confidence to be salt and light to someone groping
in the darkness. You might be a Timothy whom
God has prepared to bring relief to someone going through deep waters.
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