Devotional for 1/26/13

God Speaks

  You know how some people have absolutely no tact?  They just leave you dumbfounded with the things that they say.You wonder, “Do they really know what they’re saying?  Are they really that mean?”  Could it be that God has placed them in our path because He’s using them to speak to us?

Melissa had just given birth to her third child.  Her two other children happened to be with her at this very moment in time at the doctor’s office.  Two twin girls, aged 13 months, and a brand new baby boy left her feeling rather irritable and not in the mood for rude questions.  Enough conversations in the waiting room revealed to all who were there that the twins were adopted.  It wasn’t a big deal to Melissa, though.  She had no issues with talking about it…that is until, a stranger started stepping over the boundaries of polite conversation. 

Question after question from this woman not only wiggled her way into some very personal spaces for Melissa, but was just flat out rude.  The young mother did her best to control not only her unbelief, but her temptation to tell this individual a thing or two colored with some creative expletives.   And just when she thought she couldn’t go any further with the prodding, the woman asks her, “How does your husband feel now that he has a child that’s really his?”

Really?  Did she really say that?  Before Melissa could blurt out the first response that popped into her head sounding something like, “Well, they’re not puppies,” she realized this woman was crying.  And this woman’s tears very likely could have saved her life from the ticking time bomb about to explode inside of the exhausted, post partum Melissa. 

Eventually, the reason this woman was behaving this way was revealed.  Apparently, when she was 17, she had given up her own child for adoption.  She opened up to Melissa that she thinks about her son everyday of her life.  When she sees a football coach, she wonders if he plays football.  She’s reminded of him whenever she sees a playground, and especially when she sees a boy that would be the same age as her son.

I guess we can never know exactly what is behind the reason some people come across the way that they do.  Melissa would never forget the woman who happened to be at the doctor’s office that day.  (Who, by the way, was only there accompanying a friend and didn’t even have an appointment herself…talk about happenstance...or a God moment.)  She always remembered and always will that someone out there thinks about her daughters every single day wondering how they are doing. 

Melissa wasn’t a Christian at the time, but she is now.  Looking back, she knows that God allowed this woman to cross her path not only for the sake of her own need for assurance that she made the right choice, but also for Melissa to be thankful for the one who “chose” birth and adoption and not abortion.  Interesting, the way God speaks.  Maybe we should be more careful about how we view others who annoy us.

 

Don't look out only for your own interests,

but take an interest in others, too. 

Philippians 2:4

written by Amie Spruiell  1/23/13
courtesy of my friend, Missy