helping others

When You Serve Them, You Serve God

“Because of Your amazing sacrifice for me, I want to serve You with every fiber of my being. I know that my service is woefully inadequate. Nonetheless, when I yield myself to Your will, You bless me with Joy.”– Jesus Listens, July 4th And the King shall answer and say unto them, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” Matthew 25:40 (KJV). I grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, which, although a gift to the world for four hundred years, was not very helpful for a child trying to comprehend the storyline, and even worse when developing your own nascent vocabulary. Speaking Elizabethan English to your peers in elementary school is a quick pathway to being shunned like Esther Prynes, if only for y...

Love Goes Outside the Comfort Zone

“Let My Love flow through you to others—in both your words and your actions.” Jesus Always, May 22 On a very (very) hot Sunday morning, my family was driving to church when we saw a car stopped in the center of the road. There was plenty of room to nudge around it and keep going as plenty of vehicles did, but my husband pulled our minivan behind the stalled car and turned the ignition off. Stepping onto the hot pavement, he made his way over to where a man was bent over the open hood. With our engine (and therefore, air conditioning) turned off, our van became an instant sauna. I noticed the rest of the stalled car’s occupants standing nearby in the shaded grass of the ditch, so I suggested to my children that we join them. “But Mom!” my child whispered hesitantly. “We don’t know these peo...

Capital M-Miracles

“As the Spirit’s Love shines through you, My healing Presence goes to work in the other person.” Jesus Always I was up late at night, writing a letter to my son that would be read at his funeral the next day. Our son was born a few weeks earlier with what we learned was a rare and fatal disorder. I had started the letter with a lament, the same familiar one I had been repeating over and over to myself after I was released from the hospital. We longed for you to live, my son. We asked, but we didn’t see our miracle. The ones with the capital M’s, the ones people write about and make movies out of. Then, this next sentence came falling out onto the page. Here’s the thing, though, sweet boy. We did see other things. It surprised me. I kept writing. We did see other things We saw nurses who to...

Sebastianus & afra köln 2012 e.