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Christian author and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada writes: I’m a quadriplegic, yet I can drive a van (my hand is secured to a big joystick so I can steer, accelerate, and brake). I enjoy being independent, so if there’s something I can do, I will - even if it means tackling the drive-thru at a fast-food restaurant by myself.
Remember, my hands don’t work. That’s why last week when I cruised into the drive-thru lane to order hamburgers and Cokes, I prayed for the fellows at the pick-up window. "Lord, give them patience, and give me a smile." Then I moved to the intercom to place my order.
When I’d finished explaining "no cheese" and "extra mustard packets," I told the voice on the intercom that I was disabled. There was a pause. Then, "Okay, no problem."
I pulled up to the delivery window and smiled. Sticking my arm out the window, I asked the cashier to take the 10-dollar bill that was folded in my arm splint. That was a cinch.
While he fished for my change, I asked him to place it in the paper bag along with the hamburgers. At that point, the server bagging my order looked over his shoulder. Both boys, confused, gave each other a look that said, "Do you know what she’s talking about? ’Cause I don’t!" I smiled and slowly repeated my instructions.
They got the message - and even wrapped my change in a napkin before they dropped it into the bag with the food. Then they handed me my order. I had to ask, "Could you please lean out your window and wedge the bag between me and the van door?" Both boys looked at each other again. "I can’t reach for the bag. Remember?"
"Oh, yeah," they laughed, then hung halfway out the pick-up window to lodge the package between my wheelchair and the door. "Are you set? Are you okay?" they asked in all sincerity.
"Great job," I assured them. "God bless you guys!" They slapped the side of my van as I drove off. When I glanced in my rearview mirror, they were waving good-bye. Thanks, God, for answering prayer. That could have been awkward, but it turned out to be fun!
This is the daily stuff of my life. It always involves more than simply picking up hamburgers or the dry cleaning. It involves a chance to make God real to people. A chance for them to serve, to feel good about themselves, to experience a new way of doing things.
Problems are often God’s way of prying us out of our rut.
Michael McCartney
Swindoll notes "The Grace Awakening:
But when grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ, a long-awaited revolution of the heart began to set religious captives free. Fear-full bondage motivated by guilt was replaced with a fresh motivation to follow Him in truth simply out of deep devotion and delight. Rather than focusing on the accomplishments of the flesh, He spoke of the heart. Instead of demanding that the sinner fulfill a long list of requirements, he emphasized faith, if only the size of a mustard seed. The change spelled freedom, as the Lord himself taught,
you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32). Rigid, barren religion was, at last, replaced by a grace-orientated, relationship-liberating grace. His followers loved it. His enemies hated it
and Him. Without a doubt, the earliest grace killers were the Pharisees (10).
For more from Chuck, visit http://www.insight.org
I sat down with our senior high kids awhile ago to discuss our plans for youth activities for this year. I expected to get some ideas of fun things to do, lets go bowling and to laserquest and whitewater rafting yadda yadda yadda You know what they decided? They asked me to find two Friday night events each month half of all the things we would do where they could go and do volunteer things for others, like preparing and serving meals at the Mustard Seed Street Church. And that is what they come to Awhile ago I phoned to invite some kids to the Mustard Seed Street church to prepare and serve a meal to street people. Normally, if kids cant come bowling or to something fun, theyre like sorry, cant make it. But this time, I had a group of kids who couldnt come and they were like AWWW Sick I Cant come That really makes me mad I had one senior high student who couldnt come and was so mad she said Thats it, I cant come so Im sending some money to pay for the meal. She sent me an envelope, and I thought this is probably $20 or so, that is great itll really help pay for the meal. I opened the envelope from this grade ten student there was $60 in it. Thats a lot of money for me, let alone for a grade 10 student Another student came with us, and asked me how we were going to pay for these meals. I told him about this one students contribution, and said wed do some fundraisers to pay for the rest. That Sunday that other student handed me an envelope, and said it was to help pay for some of the meals we were doing for these street people. I tossed it on my desk, again expecting $20-$40. I opened it the next day to deal with it there was $250. From a grade 10 student. I talked to them later I said thats an awful lot of money are you sure? Yes, absolutely. Where did you get that much money? Do you know what the response was? He said, Ive been saving up for a snowboard, but those people need to eat way more than I need a snowboard.
Some time ago "Readers Digest" told the story about a company who mailed out some special advertising business post cards with a mustard seed glued to it with the following caption that went something like this: "If you have faith as small as this mustard seed in our (particular product), you are guaranteed to get excellent results and be totally satisfied." -- Signed, The Management
A few months later one recipient of this promotional piece wrote back to the company and said, "You will be very interested to know that I planted the mustard you ...
In Sir Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia, he tells a parable from the Buddha about a mother who had lost her child. Carrying its dead body in her bosom, she come to the buddha and said:"Lord and Master, do you know any medicine that while be good for my child?" "Yes," he said, "bring me a mustard seed from one house where no some or husband or parent or slave has died." From house to house she went, but never a single one could she find where death had not entered at some time or another. She returned disconsolate to the Buddha, and this was his answer:"He whom thou lowest slept, Dead on thy bosom yesterday; today Thou know’st the whole wide world weeps with your woe; The grief which all hearts share grows less for one.
I love to cook. The only problem is that many of the things I like to cook are things that my wife does not particularly care to eat. I like to cook things in a crock pot or in a pressure cooker.
One of my favorite things to cook is ham hocks and beans. My dad taught me to cook it and we used to cook it all the time! In fact, we developed our own recipe which included the ham hocks, the beans, onions, freshly sliced garlic, salt, and the final ingredient mustard!
I really have no idea if mustard is a common ingredient found in ham hocks and beans but somehow we thought of it once and it became the final touch in our recipe. Its really something though, once all of the heat and pressure begins to work on the food, the mustard will disappear.
And if you apply enough heat and pressure, all of the other ingredients start to dissolve as well. After a half a day or so in the pressure cooker all of the ingredients stop being ingredients and they become something altogether different.
They take on the attributes of the other ingredients; the colors, the textures, the smells, and the flavors.
In Luke 14:34-35 Jesus says, Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? (NKJV)
The early Church knew what it meant to be salty. The intense pressures of persecution did not destroy the Church! It worked just like the pressure cooker in my ham hocks and beans.
The heat and pressure of persecution made all of the ingredients the early Christians come together until it was very difficult to make out the individual ingredients because they had become one.
So it is with us. We have been called to allow the pressures and trials of this life draw us closer to one another until the flavors of faith and of our lives blend together and we become one body unified in one faith in Christ.
In John 13:34-35 Jesus says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.(NKJV)
"Energy, like the Biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains."
Billy Graham noted, Faith is the avenue of salvation. Not intellectual understanding. Not money. Not your works. Just simple faith. How much faith? The faith of a mustard seed, so small you can hardly see it. But if you will put that little faith in the person of Jesus, your life...
There is an old Chinese tale about the woman whose son died. In her grief, she went to the holy man and said, "What prayers, what magical incantations do you have to bring my son back to life?" Instead of sending her away or reasoning with her, he said to her, "Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to drive the sorrow out of your life."
The woman set off at once in search of that magical mustard seed. She came first to a splendid mansion, knocked at the door, and said, "I am looking for a home that has never known sorrow. Is this such a place? It is very important to me." They told her, "Youve certainly come to the wrong place," and began to describe all the tragic things that had recently befallen them.
The woman said to herself, "Who is better able to help these poor unfortunate people than I, who have had misfortune of my own?"
She stayed to comfort them, then went on in her search for a home that had never known sorrow. But wherever she turned, in hovels and in palaces, she found one tale after another of sadness and misfortune. Ultimately, she became so involved in ministering to other peoples grief that she forgot about her quest for the magical mustard seed, never realising that it had in fact driven the sorrow out of her life.
In the thick fighting of the Civil War, General Grant, in hot pursuit of General Lees troops, was half blinded with a sick headache. He stopped at a farmhouse and wrote in his memoirs, I spend the night in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard and putting mustard plasters on my wrist and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning. When morning came, he was still sick. But suddenly an officer appeared with the message that General Lee had surrendered. And Grant wrote these words, I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured.
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