If What You Need Is Light for Your Path Or A Family

On the day that the international mom’s Bible study starts up, I’m there with my own six week old son, strapped to my chest like I’m Sacagawea ascending the mountain with Lewis and Clark. 

 

Maybe I feel a little like her, this woman who embraced these visitors to her nation and showed them the way to map out a new land.  And isn’t that what we’re here to do, to study the map leading to new life?  Life in Christ is what we are seeking, and these, my fellow sojourners, are looking for new and better Land and I don’t mean America.  There is a map to Heaven, and it is found in this book.  The Bible isn't just for Sundays.  The Bible is your everyday map and who really wants to walk this wild world without one?

As I look around the table at these faces, breathtaking beauty, I catch a glimpse of wonder, Heaven touching earth. 

Because when we behold Heaven this is what we are going to see: people of every skin color, language, nation all gathered, all worshipping the One true King.  We will be feasting on His Words there and so we also feast now, here.

 The women here are from every continent on earth (excluding Australia and Antarctica) and I cannot get over the sisterhood we feel. 

 Most are new believers in Christ, some fresh with the stories of their rebirth into the family of God; fresh like the boy in my arms, still smelling of glory and God. 

A precious Chinese sister tells me of how she came to know Jesus on her university campus in China.  How her professor from another country had come to teach in China and had told her about Jesus.  He became her pastor. She told me how their little house church of two, soon became eight, then sixteen, then about thirty.  She told me how she had learned her pastor’s language just so that she could understand more of the Bible.  As she tells me her story, she fairly radiates, and radiates joy of purest light.  She tells of how she eats this Living Word everyday, drinks deep of the water found in the pages of her Bible.

And I swap stories of motherhood and Jesus-life with Oksana, my new Russian friend, because in Christ you are family at “hello”.  Forget political ploys, forget cold wars, forget headlines and armies and where you come from and where you are, because when you are a part of the body of Christ, you are family.  She tells me that my name is very Russian.  I know, I say.  And you look Russian she says.  I know, I say, I do.  And she looks like family to me.  She tells me that none of the rest of her family are believers except for her husband and children.  But here, around this table we are the scent of home, and we all can breathe deep of it, even if it is a place we have never actually walked with these feet yet. 

Here is a place hearts can rest, even on this heavenward path.  I think of my own journey, the birth of this seventh baby of ours, and another hemorrhage and how much I wanted to live to see this baby. 

And now sitting here six weeks later, carrying veritable wonder in my arms, I am deliriously thankful and desiring to make my moments full of God and His glory.  In the everyday wonder of nursing babies, scrubbing toilets, chopping vegetables, chasing toddlers, loving neighbors, driving carpool to soccer and ballet, teaching grammar and math and spelling tests and read alouds, there is wonder here.  There is miracle in these moments.  

 

From my morning Bible study with the kids, to driving the neighborhood kids to AWANA, to simply taking time to talk to a neighbor in need of love, there are people to love, prayers to be prayed, everywhere, everyday miracles, from the nations, to my front door, the whole wide world births His beauty.  And everywhere and everyday the Holy map is there,

Like the native guide, pointing a path for us, trail of Light, all the way home.