“For great is Your love, higher than the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” ~Psalm 108-4

If you are a regular reader of this blog you have probably heard of my ongoing saga to find a personal care aide for my roommate Jimmy, confined to a wheelchair due to SMA (spinal muscular atrophy). We used to have an aide – a great one in fact. This past February, he was hit by a New York City bus and has been engrossed in a slow, painful (and currently stalled) recovery.

This man, as a side note, was raised by a Muslim mother and a Hindu father. As he put it, “I was raised with so many religions, I figured I may as well celebrate the Christian holidays too.”. While this sounded promising, it didn’t exactly speak to a heart transformation. And so, after the accident, I prayed for him profusely. For a physical healing, yes, but mostly for a life-changing revelation of who Jesus is, for Jesus to rock his heart and his life and that he would experience the pure love and peace that comes from His arms. That he would know who he was celebrating.

I prayed…..and Jesus answered.

Today I went to what I thought was the Guyanese equivalent of Thanksgiving. I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. It turned out to be his and his wife’s personal day of Thanksgiving, of opening up their home to their entire church (via many, many chairs set up in the backyard) and giving thanks to the Lord for all they have.

Today I witnessed our former aide speak to his church. His face was contorted into a grimace of pain and he struggled to stand, leaning so hard on a cane that his arms were shaking. I knew he was using all his muscles to balance himself because he has yet to regain full feeling in one of his legs. But not a bit of that came into his testimony. Instead, the words out of his mouth were of such passionate gratitude that he started to tear up.

And so I have my turn to give thanks. I am so, so thankful that I serve a God who is so present in our lives that he can perform miracles – not just in the physical world around us, but inside of us. That we can know Him, walk with Him, live with Him, open ourselves up to His unceasing love and attention. Our God is not at an altar; we don’t have to go anywhere special to find Him. He’s not in incense, He’s not in fire, He’s not in flowers. He’s in us, with us and surrounding us, active in both the biggest moments of our lives and the minutia. He listens to the cries of our hearts – and He answers.

God bless!

~Rebekah A