Miracles (27 page)
Bree shot Carl an amazed look.
“That's really great of you,” Andy said. “But we're about finished here. We stocked the kitchen, and several of the ladies brought casseroles and stuff. And we gave the house a real thorough cleaning.”
Lawrence nodded. “Well, I thought of something I could do. I'm a builder, you know. I thought I'd come over here with my crew tomorrow and make the house wheelchair accessible. I heard the woman's paralyzed on one side, so she'll be in a wheelchair for a while.”
Andy stood up straight and looked back at the two of them. Bree and Carl both began to cry.
Lawrence seemed puzzled by their reaction, so he shifted his car into park and got out, peering at them over the hood. “Did I say something wrong?”
Bree shook her head. “No, not at all.” She went around the car and hugged the man. “I'm just so amazed at the way God works.”
She felt his body shake as he hugged her back.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he whispered.
C
ARL WAS QUIET AS HE PULLED INTO BREE'S driveway, and Andy leaned up on the seat and patted her shoulder.
“It's been fun, guys,” Bree said. “I'll never forget the things we've done these last few days.”
“I know,” Andy said. “I'll be changed forever.”
Carl set his wrist on the steering wheel and looked at a spot on his windshield. “I miss my gift, though. I felt so anointed there for a while. I was so full of purpose.”
Andy sighed. “We still have purpose, Carl. And we
are
anointed.”
“We are,” Bree agreed. “We're chosen, and God has given us work to do. It was really great having God work through us like that. But you know something? I've felt God working through us tonight too, even since our gifts went away. He did things just as mighty and amazing as He did when I could see with His eyes, or when Carl walked with His feet, or when Andy spoke with His tongue.”
Andy started to laugh softly. “And the best part was seeing Him work like that in the rest of our church. Everyone having a purpose. Every purpose working together.”
“And the fruit bearing fruit.”
Bree shifted on the seat so that she could look Andy fully in the face. “We can't go back to the way we were before. I don't ever want to ignore all those needy people around me again. I don't want to be useless anymore.”
“Me, either,” Carl said. “I've devoted my feet to the Lord from this point on. I'm going where I'm told. Like Isaiah 52:7 says, âHow lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”'”
Bree squeezed Carl's arm. “I'm going to devote my feet to Him too. And I'm going to try to keep seeing with His eyes.”
“âBlessed are the eyes which see,'” Andy said. “Luke 10:23. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to keep studying my Bible, so I can be ready in season and out of season. So that I can know God's truths well enough to speak it boldly.”
“Let's all vow to do that,” Bree said.
“From now on,” Carl agreed, “let's be ready to speak the praises of God.”
Andy nodded. “Just like Zacharias did in Luke 1:64.”
“We may have lost our gifts,” Bree said. “But we're still so gifted because of Christ and all He's given us. And when we go back to work and we start trying to invite people to our Bible study again, I think it'll be different this time. This time, we'll be using the power we have in the Holy Spirit. Loving them, filling their needs, attracting them to what we are in Christ.” She grinned. “This time we won't leave it all up to e-mails and brochures.”
“I'm with you.” Carl reached out to take her hand. “We're a team.”
Andy put his hand over both of theirs. “All for One, and One for All. That's God's plan for His Body.”
“What a plan it is,” Bree whispered. “What an awesome, amazing plan.”
1. Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines “ministry” as “a person or thing through which something is accomplished.” Applying that definition to the Christian faith, I would add that Christian ministry is “a person or thing through which something is accomplished to further Christ's kingdom.” What have you done lately to further the kingdom of Christ?
2. In your church, are there two groupsâ those who serve and those being served? Which group are you in?
3. What are some excuses people use for not getting involved in ministry?
4. Some believe the paid ministers in your church are the ones who should do all the work in furthering the Kingdom. Read Ephesians 4:11â12. What does Paul say the ministerial staff are supposed to do? Who is supposed to do the actual “work of service”?
5. List the attributes of those in your church who seem to do everything. For instance, are they compassionate? Are they merciful? Do they have special skills? What makes them better suited for ministry than others? Are they really better suited, or are they just more willing?
6. Read Romans 12, then list the gifts in this passage. Do your gifts fit into any of these categories?
7. What crises or trials in your life might have prepared you for helping others?
8. What would a “spiritual triage” look like in your church?
9. Are there examples in your church, or in your area of ministry, where you've seen your fruit bearing fruit?
10. What attributes in your personality or skill sets could help further the kingdom of Christ?
11. At the end of your life, what would you like to have accomplished? Write an obituary of your life, the way you'd like for it to read. Then ask God to help you live that kind of life.
Also from Terri Blackstock
Excerpt from
Covenant Child
ONE
There's a question that haunts me in the blackest hours of night, when wasted moments crowd my dreams and mock the life I know. The question is this: How could a child born of privilege and promise grow up with nothing?
I was Somebody when I was born. Lizzie, my twin, says we were heiresses all along. “Our grandfather was a billionaire,” she says. “Just think of it, Kara!” There were newspaper articles about us when we were three. They called us the “Billion Dollar Babies.”
But these Billion Dollar Babies wore Goodwill hand-me-downs. We ate dry cereal most nights for supper, right out of the box, picking out the raisins to save for our school lunches the next day. In my memory, we never formally observed a birthday, because no one around us considered that day worthy of celebration. We were worthless no accounts to most of the people in town.
But all along we had an inheritance that no one told us was ours.
I sometimes try to remember back to the days before we were three, but my memories are tainted with the lies I've been taught and the pictures I've seen. I can't quite sift out real recollections from my faulty assumptions, but I do know that the things I've laid out here are true. Not because I remember them, but because I've studied all the sides, heard all the tales, read all the reports . . . and a few things have emerged with absolute clarity.
The first thing is that my father, Jack Holbrooke, was the son of the Paul Holbrooke, who did something with microchips and processors, things I can't begin to understand, and amassed a fortune before he was thirty. My father, Jack, got religion in his teens and decided he didn't want to play the part of the rich son. He became a pilot instead, bought a plane, and began flying charter flights and giving lessons. He disowned himself from the Holbrooke money and told his father that, instead of leaving any of it to him in his will, he preferred that he donate it to several evangelical organizations who provided relief and shared the gospel to people all over the world.
My grandfather tolerated his zeal and noted his requests, then promptly ignored them.
My mother, Sherry, was a teen runaway, who left Barton, Mississippi, at fifteen to strike out on her own. She wound up living with a kind family in Jackson, and she got religion, too. She met my father in Jackson, when he put an ad in the paper for some office help at his hangar, and they fell in love around the time she was nineteen or so. They got married and had Lizzie and me less than a year later.
She was killed in a car wreck when we were just weeks old. Our father raised us himself for the next three years. I've seen pictures of him, and he looks like a kind, gentle man who laughed a lot. There are snapshots of him kissing us, dunking us like basketballs in his father's pool, chasing us across the lawn of the little house we lived in, reading us books, tucking us in. There are three birthday photos of our father lying on the floor with two cake-smeared redheads tearing into boxes of Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls.
Sometimes I close my eyes and think hard, trying to bring back those moments, and for a while I convince myself that they are not just images frozen on paper, but they're live events in my head somewhere. I even think I can smell that cake and feel my father's stubbled face against mine. I can hear his laughter shaking through me and feel his arms holding me close.
But in truth, my memories don't reach that far back.
I don't even think I remember Amanda. Lizzie says she has more impressions of her than memories, that the snapshots just bring those impressions into clearer focus. I guess that's true with me, too.
But I wish I could remember when she met our father and us, how she wound up being his wife, how she was widowed and robbed of her children, and how she spent her life trying to keep a promise she had made to him . . . and to us.
But, according to Lizzie, truth is truth, whether it lies in your memory banks or not. So I'll start with Amanda's story, the way it was told to me, because it is very much the beginning of mine.