day 26 - not this time, snake

I didn’t have a clue where this post was going until just now. I love it when He does that.

I just received an email from my cousin’s stepson. We met at the funeral, and he is overjoyed at the prospect of a whole other family – people who will love him, no matter what. Well, I’m ashamed to admit it, but that statement does not correctly describe the hearts of my family. What he’s looking for, and does not yet know, is the family of God. It’s up to me to show him.

Apparently, the Lord is not done with this whole adventure yet…

Bill’s stepson has decided to continue the “tradition” of forwarding, um, worldly joke emails in “honor” of Bill. That creates a dilemma for me. I’ll be the first to admit I used to invade people’s inboxes on a daily basis, not with bawdy jokes, but with funny forwards, prayer chains and the like. Well, somewhere along the way, I realized that it really was an invasion and that there was no possible way for 25 people to read 200 prayer requests everyday… so I stopped, much to the relief of the recipients, I’m sure. Most people responded in kind, and stopped forwarding emails to me when they stopped receiving emails from me. There were some that held out, and I had to gently ask them to please stop. By far and large, most have honored that request and everything is kosher.

The week before Bill died, I received an email from him. It was a forward – one about letters from children to God – an example would be, “Dear God – are you invisible, or is that a trick?” Cute enough that I thought about some friends of mine that have a heart for small children that I was considering sending it to. Then I decided I wasn’t going to break my own “forward” rule, so I started to delete it. No biggie – I delete forwards all the time from the few stubborn holdouts. I seriously had my cursor over the delete button and hesitated. I had a thought that this might be the last email from Bill. Little did I ever dream that I was absolutely correct.

The thing about Bill’s forwards to me is that they were never the raunchy kind. They were always “religious” emails – some dead on about salvation and intimacy with the Father. He knew who I am and what I’m about, so he kept them clean.

Now I have a new renegade forwarder to… handle? How do I adequately represent myself in such a way that I don’t turn him off, or turn him away, or do anything that makes me look like the judgmental churchy-type? How do I respect my own eyes and inbox and still be responsible with His reputation? The answer? Love him. That’s all I know to do.

So, my faithful readers, how in the world am I going to tie this in with today’s Scripture? Well, let me just tell you. Luke 21:1-4 says this:

1As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.[a] 3"I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

In our 30 days book, the message ends with this phrase: “he looks at the heart, always.” Those simple word struck me so deeply, at just the right time - “he looks at the heart, always.”

The continuation of Bill’s tradition of forwarding raunchy emails hit me in the heart. For a moment, before He calmed me, everything I wrote about in the last post lost all credibility – I was a fake and maybe slightly insane. Then His Truth hit me and all is well in my heart again. He sent me there for a reason. If anything, this confirms that, not refutes it. The enemy’s attempt to sideswipe me failed. The Father, to the very last, was after Bill's heart. It remains my belief that He stole it away from the enemy in those last few hours.