"The Spirit of Ministry is the Spirit of Heaven, and with every effort to develop and encourage it, Angels will cooperate."
- E.G.W. Ministry of Healing 401


 February 2004

 Return to Testimonials
 Return to Home Page

 

 

 

This website is created and maintained by Megan Field

 

  

ISN’T IT AMAZING?
By Donna Jackson

Isn’t it amazing that elephants can swim and bumblebees can fly!  Scientists in the early part of the 20th century declared that bumblebees should be incapable of flight due to their disproportionate ratio of body weight to wing span.  Good that none of the bumblebees read science journals or they never would have ventured off the ground.

And isn’t it even more amazing that we all start out smaller than the period at the end of this sentence—just a tiny dot that cannot be seen by an human’s vision.  But God sees.

And isn’t it incredible that from this little dot we end up with literally trillions of cells programmed with astounding intelligence—intricate chemical production, exchange abilities and communication abilities that we little understand?  But God understands.

Isn’t it amazing that God designed us to have a deep hunger for intimacy with one another and Him?  And more amazing that God hungers for this too.

Isn’t it strange how easily we forget that we belong to one another, that we need one another, and that we all—single and married, young to aged, male and female—are searching for the same things?  We seek to find the meaning of our lives, to be understood, to love and be loved, to be competent for the job of living.  But not surprising, since God is Father to us all.

Isn’t it amazing how sensitive we are to our own pain, yet less sensitive to others?  Such as—

  • the  100,000 women and children that flee to the shelter of safe homes each year in Canada,
  • those entombed in their grief over lost loved ones through death or divorce,
  • this generation of children who have been robbed of their innocence by insidious attacks from multiple channels,
  •  the heart cry of some men and women longing for healing from same sex attraction,
  • the thousands of voiceless embryos aborted in Canada while thousands of childless couples long to cradle a baby,
  • the people who struggle with severe impairments and their caregivers who pour out their lives with little respite,
  • and, the forgotten elderly who live with loneliness and fear.

God hears and feels and responds.

Why don’t we care more like our Father?  Why not help our children glimpse the wonder of their existence.  Why not tell the positive and funny stories of our families, and celebrate our strengths and how we found faith during the crises in our lives.

I’m not talking about throwing flattering words around to achieve our ends, which reminds me of the young man of the ripe old age of 12 who, when asked how to make marriage work, answered, “You just tell your wife she’s pretty even if she looks like a truck.”

As my husband and I stepped out of a North Carolina hotel last August and rounded a corner in the parking lot, our eyes met an unusually heartwarming sight.  Two tall, handsome African-American boys flanking their mother bent down and simultaneously planted kisses on both of her cheeks.  She appeared surprised and delighted.

The next day, while waiting for my husband, this same woman walked past me.  I stopped her and told her that I was moved to witness the boys’ spontaneous affection.  (Having survived mothering three teens—and they my mothering—it was not difficult to recognize the rarity of this sight!)  I then inquired of her if she were a single mom.  Crystal, an attractive woman in her early 40s shared a little of her story:  Her husband walked out of their life when their three children were young.  Though the ensuing years were a struggle, she determined that her children would experience new sights and the joy of discovering their own country.  Every summer found them in a new state or two.  The kisses that I happened on were her sons’ expressions of gratitude for being in a North Carolina ocean-town.

From the radiance and peace in her face, I guessed that she was a Christian.  “Oh, yes,” Crystal answered, “and God has been faithful to us.”  Then, raising her body to a noble bearing, she declared, “I’m raising my boys to be men of God as I raised my daughter to be a woman of God.”  She went on emphatically, “I speak life to my boys, not death.  God is first in our lives and I don’t let anything, not anything, interfere with that.

Are we not called to bring God’s touch into the commonplace, to confront injustice, to speak life not death to one another, and to help bind the wounds of a generation that will soon go down in ashes or be raised to eternal amazement?

By the way, isn’t God’s grace amazing?

Donna Jackson is the Family and Women’s Ministries Director of the Ontario Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.  Donna kindly permitted this reprint of her article  which appears in the February 2004 issue of Canadian Adventist Messenger.