Meeting God’s Faithfulness

Generally, I go to one conference a year.  I’m pretty picky, since I only get one shot.  Normally it’s the speakers, or the topic, or the sponsoring group that takes the lead in my decision.  But every year I leave realizing that God chose to work in my life in unexpected ways, not just through the speakers, or forums, or electives.
    Last week found me attending a conference in Philadelphia – Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest.  I saw her as I came out the first general session.  My mind went back to my youthful buck teeth (long since fixed by tooth extractions and orthodontics).  Whoa, she seriously needs to see an orthodontist.
    I would see her for the rest of the conference, a perky woman, joyfully interacting with folks during breaks.  Often I stood near enough to hear her struggling to pronounce words through her severe overbite.
    While driving home Gale read me a little brochure she had picked up called Finding Hope through Suffering: A Gateway to Intimacy with God.  Gale hadn’t finished three paragraphs when I realized that this was the woman I had been observing at the conference.  On Nov. 7, 2005, this 37 year old mother of two had her face disfigured by extensive cancer surgery which removed most of her lower jaw.
    This little brochure was a single page, yet her story of God’s faithfulness to his promises is now engraved deeply into my heart.  When Gale finished reading, II Corinthians 1 came to mind.  Paul has just experienced what he calls “a great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life” (II Cor. 1:9).  Then he writes “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.  And so through Him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (II Cor. 1:20).
    And through Christ the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.  In her brief brochure story, Ruth Moran, says ‘amen”…truly, truly…to the faithful God, giving him glory.  As she listed the promises that God carved into her heart through her physical scars, not one of them were promises of God’s healing.  They were all promises of how God would send everything we need along with everything he sends into our lives so our hearts would never be separated from his love…in life or in death.
    Listen to Ruth’s amen.  “I have asked myself, ‘If I had the chance, would I go back to the way I was B.C. – Before Cancer?’  Would I go back to eating, and singing, and speaking clearly?  Would I exchange the deformity and the pain to be physically whole again?  I can honestly say that I wouldn’t take back by former life.  When I find my delight in Him, He literally gives me the desires of my heart, just as Psalm 37:4 promises.  That does not mean that He gives me what I want, but He changes me and places in my heart the desire to want whatever brings Him glory.  When He took away some of the temporary comforts of this earth, He replaced them with a deeper and irreplaceable knowledge of Himself and a growing passion for His Word and the glory of His Name.”
(www.caringbridge.org/visit/ruthmoran)