Mike, it's Friday! Give me the keyboard...
Well, you're heading back to Atlanta this morning after visiting with your mother this past week. Please don't pray for 'traveling mercies' - I have no idea what those are any more than you do. But somehow people feel comforted praying for them, just one more example of theological ear-candy like 'age of accountability', 'the rapture', and - the mother of all ear-candy - 'Calvinism.' In the end, I must take the blame for making you all so inventive and creative, even if your understanding is more fiction than truth.
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk to you about.
I want to talk about your mother.
You know, when I form humans, I give them each unique challenges that will be difficult to overcome without my help. They can often be surmounted via human will alone, and many take that path. Others can be managed in a combination of human striving and my grace, and the end result is better than what one might have achieved on his own.
But there are those who I gift with 'thorns' - to use Paul's descriptor - who absolutely must depend on me for grace sufficient each day to press on in spite of them. I gave you some of those.
But here's the thing: if I give you thorns, I also place full-blossoming roses in your life as a daily reminder of my love and goodness.
Your mother is one of the roses I gave you, and she is one of those of which I am most proud.
You humans have a colloquial phrase, "They broke the mold when they made her." With your mother, there was no mold. A 'mold' would imply there would be others like her, that I could simply cast another individual as a finished replica at will.
Mike, there's no one like her. She's one of a kind.
You needed her love and care as a child, you needed her faith growing up, you needed a rock to cling to during very dark years. And, today, you need her presence and generosity of spirit more than ever.
And, most importantly, you need someone to regularly beat you in Bananagrams so you'll stop thinking you're Me...
She gave you very early the rich notes of song you've clung to your whole life. She raised you to know I was real, and to have the discipline and desire to study and assemble with other believers. She taught not only what giving is, but what *selfless* giving looks like. She modelled promises and commitments in the face of giving up or taking the easy way out.
I gave her all of these gifts to share with everyone. And she does.
But I gave them to her especially for you.
Your mother faced thorns of her own, and faced them with grace beyond measure. Those thorns have bookended her life, and I knew her quiet strength would become the hope to which you still cling.
Continue to cling to that hope.
Continue to be your mother's son.
As you both mirror my own.
Amen. - God
