I opened up the drawer to the small wooden end table that sits next to John’s favorite recliner in the family room. I took out a whole bunch of past sermon notes, books, and other random papers. As I flipped through them with the intention of finally getting organized, they stared at me.
Last summer I printed cards with scripture verses on them to hang in John’s hospital room.
Now, they no longer hang in a hospital room, but they sit in a drawer, all together, like a deck of cards, forgotten. I read through them slowly. Each one evoking a different feeling, a different mental image of those days that still seem like yesterday.
And then I came to the last card. It stared at me like the others, but this one caused me to stare back. I looked at it. I read it over and over. And I stared some more.
The Holy Spirit began to tell me why this one is different – why this one is special. This one tells my story. This is my life verse.
Several months ago I heard the idea of a “life verse” for the first time. It was a new concept to me to distinguish one verse from all of the others that mostly encompasses your life’s journey and purpose, but I was obviously behind the times on this one. Talking to other people the idea has been around a long time.
It was a neat idea, but I couldn’t imagine choosing one verse of the Bible to be a life verse. Except for the law books in the beginning of the Old Testament, I think probably every other verse needs to be my life verse. I never thought about it again.
That is until I opened the drawer of the small wooden end table next to John’s favorite recliner.
I flashbacked to the ten years after college that I lived as a single woman desperate for a husband and refusing to trust God. Then I thought about my testimony to all the single women I meet today and the story I have to tell.
I flashbacked to how I felt when God finally brought my husband to me and only two years later we were told he would have to have a heart transplant. Then I thought of my words to Satan, “You may take my husband through this process, but God will be glorified, and lives will be changed through our experience.”
I flashbacked to sitting in the waiting room as John was being hooked up to life support. Once again I had to lay down my desire for a husband, look God in the face, and say, “Your will be done.” Then I thought of all the people who talked to God, maybe for the first time or for the first time in a long time, on behalf of John and the countless emails I received about how people were moved to God through John’s story.
The enemy does intend to harm me. He intends to kill, steal, and destroy.
Sitting in that hospital last summer, I would imagine in hopeful prayer meeting in Heaven the people who my heartache connected to God.
God uses it all for good.
Do you have a life verse? How did you decide upon it?
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