WARNING:  This is a no-edit zone…

We’re in the path of Hurricane Ida, and busy doing all preparations one does for a storm.  Gathering supplies, checking batteries, making sure there are matches and candles and flashlights close at hand.

This morning we ran associated errands and stopped amid them for lunch.  It was raining and the walks were slick.  When we walked into the door of the restaurant, it was like walking on glass.  Before I knew what happened, I slid and down I went.  Knee to concrete.

It hurt badly enough that it took my breath, and I couldn’t move for a minute.  You know that kind of pain.  It’s just a vice and there’s nothing to do for it but hiss and wait until the surges and waves pass.  And so I did.

I’m fine, muscles spasms and swelling and bruising aside, but as I sat a bit after the worst of the throbbing passed, I thought to myself, God, why did this have to happen?

Immediately, an image flashed in my mind of an elderly woman taking the tumble I’d taken only she broke her hip.   The pain on her face was a horror to see.

I’d had the restaurant move a non-slip mat between the door and carpet so no one else could slip as I had, and this image, very vivid in my mind, was to me a signal that she’d be spared.

Can I prove this?  No.  Do I believe it?  Yes, I do.  I fell so she wouldn’t.  I didn’t break anything and will be uncomfortable for a few days.  She’d have been in agony a while longer.

The point of my post is this:  Each morning of my life, I ask God, “Let me be a blessing today.”

Today, in falling, in seeing that image of her so clearly in my mind, I feel I was a blessing.

Whether proof of it is seen or not, the reminder is that sometimes when we ask for something we are answered in ways we don’t expect.  Who thinks of taking a fall as being a blessing?  Before today, I hadn’t.  And so the insight I’ve received is that when we choose to serve, sometimes it requires more from us than we initially think.  Never again will I utter, Lord, let me be a blessing today, and do so not knowing that I could have endure unpleasantness for the privilege.  But that does make the offering truer service in a sense, doesn’t it?  I mean, it’s easy to give when it costs you nothing.  When it costs you and you choose to do it anyway, that’s more meaningful, isn’t it?

I’ll continue to ask each morning.  And when I do, I’ll think then as I do now, how tiny my little offer is compared to the one Christ made.  And I’ll recall as I do that He made that offer knowing exactly what He would pay for His service to us.

I’m not fit to wipe the dust from His sandals, and yet He gives me these little jewels of insights and made me a princess.  I’m humbled.  I’m grateful.

I am blessed.

Vicki