The Final Touch

“I have not hid­den your sav­ing help within my heart,
I have spo­ken of your faith­ful­ness and your sal­va­tion;
I have not con­cealed your stead­fast love and your faith­ful­ness…” –Psalm 40:10

My next-door neigh­bor called me yes­ter­day: “I just have to boast about God and tell you what he did for us!” I had to ask her to repeat her words; not only was she on her cell phone with a bit of crack­ling going on, but it wasn’t a word-combination I was used to: “I just have to boast about God…” This Lutheran has been learn­ing a lot from her about liv­ing faith openly – not obnox­iously, by any means, but openly.

I had known the defrost wasn’t work­ing in her mini-van, and that they were hav­ing to drive with the win­dows cracked in our below-zero tem­per­a­tures this week. I had known their finances were tight — we are in much the same posi­tion, our two fam­i­lies, and she and I are good about help­ing each other see our abun­dance rather than what we lack — and that they’d had to request help from oth­ers to get this repair made. They’d been advised to get an esti­mate and let the donors know; they’d see how much they could give.

But “I just have to boast about God…!” she said. Turns out she didn’t have to wait overly long with her tod­dler and her baby at the mechanic, and when he brought her the diag­no­sis, it was that the AC coolant had frozen. When they warmed it up, every­thing worked great again! What’s more, when she asked what she owed him, he said, “Nothing”!

“I just have to boast about God and tell you what he did for us!”

It made me won­der… how often does God do things for me, couched in the form of “coin­ci­dence” or “luck” or “chance”… and either I fail com­pletely to rec­og­nize the inci­dent as God’s out­stretched hand car­ing for me, or I rec­og­nize it as such but offer only a silent “thanks” in the depths of my heart? What if I were to say to some­one — not in an impos­ing way, but in a casual, friendly-sharing way — “I just have to boast about God and tell you what he did!” or “I’ve gotta tell you where I saw God’s good­ness at work today!” or some­thing like that. The pre­cise word-combination doesn’t mat­ter as much as the giv­ing of credit — some­what pub­licly — where credit is due.

photo © 2010 David Woo | more info (via: Wylio)

So… stop back tomor­row to read my boasting-about-God story! And share your own in a com­ment, if you would like to. (Just click on the pur­ple text below that says how many com­ments have already been posted.)