Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Mennace & Ministry

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.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com
[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

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