Epiphany

Many of the great men in the Bible had what some would consider inauspicious beginnings--as in, they started out as servants to their mentors. Elisha "poured water on the hands of Elijah" (2 Kings 3:11). Joshua was a servant to Moses ( Numbers 11:28). David was armor bearer to Saul (I Samuel 16:21). So, like many other anointed ministers of our day, Auntie Trinie was in good company when she began her service to the Lord.

You see, she began her ministry as a mere servant, serving in the oh-so-humble area of helps. She was sent to fix any and everything that was broken in the church proper and on properties owned by the minister. Humble beginnings, maybe, but, her grumpy family notwithstanding (they weren't too thrilled to have her gallivanting around town dressed down in a manner evocative of plumbers and general factotums, to such an "informal" degree that she was once taken for a beggar!), she cheerfully put her hand to the plow. All things do work together for good to those who love the Lord, for in so doing she acquired handy skills that served her well all her life long.

Then, after a season of showing her willingness to put her nose to any and all grindstones, she was promoted to something more "ministry-like". Her next commission? The mission church in Monterrey, Mexico.

Now Auntie was stepping in high cotton. Now she was getting to minister in services as well as one on one. She still had to pinch pennies, making them stretch to the max, but that was never an in issue with her. You see, in yesteryear, missionaries were expected to live in impoverishment. So the money paucity was pfft!--not an issue at all. For Auntie, life on the mission field was all-around good--until the bombshell. Word came from the administrative offices in Wisconsin that Missionary X was being sent to live and minister in Monterrey alongside Auntie.

Missionary X's name will remain anonymous, as she was a servant of the Lord and you know what happened to the young men (King James calls them children, but a more accurate translation would be youths) who taunted Elisha (2 Kings 2). Personally, I have a distinct aversion to becoming bear fodder. All kidding aside, the last thing I want to do is cast Missionary X in a bad light---she loved the Lord, gave her life in service to Him, and it would be a disservice to her Master to denigrate her. She will have to give account to God and God alone for her faults and foibles, not to me. The only fact I would like to bring forth is a personality trait that, unfortunately, grated on Auntie's.

That's the way life is. There will be people in our lives who drive us to our knees. It doesn't mean that the person who causes us grief is a bad person--it only means that God has made us each to be different, with different likes and dislikes, different personalities, and, as is only natural, sometimes one personality rubs another the wrong way. Such was the case with Auntie and Missionary X.

"I didn't have anything against her," Auntie lamented to me, "but it seemed that no matter what I said, she took it the wrong way. It would cause friction of some sort. It was bad enough running into her now and then, but now to live and work side by side with her day after day?" Auntie closed her eyes at the horror the thought evoked. "How in the world were we going to get along together?"

Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion states, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction". Isn't this an extrapolation of Scripture, which says we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-9)? When someone insists on berating you at every turn, there is a reciprocal, negative reaction. That someone sowed discord; they reap something not good. Loving that person, being nice to him or her, becomes a harrowing challenge.

Auntie had more to be concerned about than just her own wellbeing. There were other valid reasons to fear the coming challenge. First and foremost: bickering missionaries aren't the best example to tout God's love to the community at large.

There was nothing to do but quit herself like a man (or woman) and take the bull by the horns. But how was she to conquer the coming turmoil when she hadn't been able to in the past? She and Missionary X had attended the same Bible school. They had ministered in the same mission church in Brownsville, Texas. If she hadn't been able to master getting along with her before, how could she now that they would be working side by side every single day?

In desperation, on one memorable night right before Missionary X was due at the mission, Auntie fell on her knees by her bed and poured out her fears and feelings of helplessness before the Lord. She laid out all the horror of the future she saw looming before her.

"Lord God," she confessed, "I don't know what to do. I have tried to be judicious in my words to her in the past but somehow it seems that every single time I open my mouth, what comes out, however innocuous it seems to me, rubs her the wrong way. I don't know what to do. I need Your help!"

David wrote, "I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart" (Psalm 101:2). God loves to see His children strive to walk in integrity in public as well as in the privacy of their home (where many feel free to deviate from behavior that glorifies the Lord). He loves transparency, for us to lay our needs out before Him in all truth. And He loves it when we realize that all we have to do is ask. Loving Father that He is, He is always there, ready to hold our hand, ready to help us through the difficulty that to Him is no difficulty whatsoever.

So Auntie bared her heart before the Lord in integrity and transparency. She sought His help. And He answered with the experience of a lifetime.

As she lifted her eyes to Heaven, the most incredible thing happened. A wave of what she could only describe as Heavenly love washed over her, all the way from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. And this Heavenly whatever-it-was filled her with an unshakeable awareness that God was enduing her with a supernatural love for her sister in Christ, filling her with His love.

Even as Auntie basked in the glory of the moment, the Holy Spirit dropped a verse into her heart, Psalm 141:3, "Set a watch O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips." Auntie got the message. The Holy Spirit was quickening this verse to her as an anchor to hang on to in the coming days. Yes, God was giving her a healthy dose of His divine love for the hard-to-love sister in Christ, but He was also giving her a word to stand on daily.

So Auntie thanked God, and tucked the verse into her heart. She began to pull it out daily, asking God to put a watch on her mouth so that her words would be such that they caused no offense. And guess what. Missionary X came. Every day Auntie prayed the verse God gave her. And although Auntie and Missionary X never became bosom buddies, they were able to live and work for the Lord side by side in peace, with no more turbulence caused by hurtful words between them.

Now that is the glory of God.

"And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock," (and that rock is JESUS!) "and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by" (Exodus 33:22).

"In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God" (Psalm 62:7).