A Difference

A couple of days ago I attended the funeral of The Warrior. It had been months since she had been told she probably would not make it through the night. She was a warrior though and the doctors never take a Grizzly Bear seriously. At the funeral, so many stories were told by so many people. Her grandson got up and told about his memories of his grandma, whom he lived with for a while. He told about how much he hated getting up when she did at unreasonable hours to pray and read the Bible. He told us how much he hated it, but now realizes that his grandma was giving him not what he wanted, but what he needed. Through all of the stories of her witnessing to person after person and fighting the evils of this world relentlessly, it occurred to me that she had a large hand in my salvation. Jesus rescued me from train tracks, and there were others who fought for me too. But without that little old Grizzly Bear telling me that I was worth something to her and to God and that she would not stop praying for me every day until she dies made Jesus make sense. If it weren't for those people, I could have never connected that Jesus was a Savior now, not just 2 thousand years ago on the cross. He desired to heal me then and now. I want to be like that. In this book I am reading, "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan (You have to read it, even if you do not listen to another thing I say). In this book, he talks about how many of us see life as one big movie about us and we live in that movie accordingly. But the truth is this movie has always been about God, we are extras. We certainly would not rent out a theater and show everyone we know and try to pop out of a limo at the premiere if we were just some extra in the background that no one will remember in time. We need to live as if God were the only story and live to glorify Him all of the time giving ourselves and wants and dreams to Him. Even when things are going badly. This is God's story. Become that Grizzly Bear with me.