and show you great and mighty things,
which you do not know."
(Jeremiah 33:3)
Isn't it comforting to know that in this world of voice mails, and beepers, and intercepting operators, there is one place we can call where we will never get a busy signal or be put on hold? It's the direct line to the Lord God Almighty, Creator of the Universe, Ruler of Heaven and Earth, CEO of CEO's. How awesome is that? And not only is it a free call, but He answers it right away, Himself, 24/7. But I digress.
When I was a baby Christian, it did not comfort me to be told that I was never alone, because God was always with me. To me, a flesh and blood partner was more to be desired, and I kept pointing out to God that He needed people to work through. Like when I was having a problem figuring out something on my computer, or I needed help carrying my groceries up the stairs, or I was feeling lonely and needed a great big bear hug. I would even throw Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 up to Him, and argue that He himself had said "Two are better than one . . . For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up."
Well, for the first 12 years of my Virginia odyssey, I was alone, and during that time the Lord showed me many examples of how wrong my thinking was. I'm not going to cover much of that in this post because I'm saving it for my testimony, but I do want to share one incident where He let me see that even though He is invisible, He could still teach me how to do anything I thought I needed a human person for, and do it even better.
That incident took place almost ten years ago. I was attending a group where they were talking about the special personal blessings God gifts us with, and likening them to jewels. Right away I started thinking of writing mine out on little slips of paper and getting a box to put them in that I could decorate with magic markers or stickers to make it look pretty.
The next morning, as I drove to Ben Franklin to look for a box, I started thinking how nice it would be to get boxes for the rest of the ladies in the group too. However, I couldn't find anything like what I had in mind, and the saleslady led me over to some unfinished wooden boxes in different shapes and sizes, suggesting I could use these instead.
I asked her what I could do with them, and she gave me some suggestions such as paint them with acrylic paint, use Modge Podge to glue things on, and at that point I think the Lord must have taken over, because all I remember from then on is walking up and down the aisles, impulsively picking up this and that, and leaving the store with a bunch of stuff I had no experience working with at all.
When I got home, I set everything up on a card table and looked at it for a while, wondering what had possessed me to so mindlessly spend all this money that I didn't really have to spend, and on something that might well wind up trashed if I messed up. But not to worry. I had a couple of creative artsy crafty friends I could call on who would surely help me out.
I picked up the phone and dialed one, and then the other. Both times the phone rang and rang, but no one answered. And so now it was just the Lord and me. Time for some serious prayer. And as I prayed, two verses popped into mind with a thought that one would look nice around the edge of the lid, and the other one could be pasted inside the lid. So to my computer I went to type them up and print them out.
Then I had another thought. It might be nice to make the verse for the inside of the lid look like a scroll. But how to do that? And what should I do about names for the outside of the boxes? How I did the scroll thing, I'm really not sure. You can believe me or not, but to this day I have never again figured out how to recreate it.
As for the rainbow colored names I wound up gluing to the tops of the boxes, that was something I accidentally stumbled upon. Again, I cannot tell you how. All I can say is that it happened while I was trying to do something else. Suddenly, by some divinely engineered fluke, there was Word Art on my screen, a feature of my computer software I had no idea even existed until that moment in time.
The next morning, as I drove to Ben Franklin to look for a box, I started thinking how nice it would be to get boxes for the rest of the ladies in the group too. However, I couldn't find anything like what I had in mind, and the saleslady led me over to some unfinished wooden boxes in different shapes and sizes, suggesting I could use these instead.
I asked her what I could do with them, and she gave me some suggestions such as paint them with acrylic paint, use Modge Podge to glue things on, and at that point I think the Lord must have taken over, because all I remember from then on is walking up and down the aisles, impulsively picking up this and that, and leaving the store with a bunch of stuff I had no experience working with at all.
When I got home, I set everything up on a card table and looked at it for a while, wondering what had possessed me to so mindlessly spend all this money that I didn't really have to spend, and on something that might well wind up trashed if I messed up. But not to worry. I had a couple of creative artsy crafty friends I could call on who would surely help me out.
I picked up the phone and dialed one, and then the other. Both times the phone rang and rang, but no one answered. And so now it was just the Lord and me. Time for some serious prayer. And as I prayed, two verses popped into mind with a thought that one would look nice around the edge of the lid, and the other one could be pasted inside the lid. So to my computer I went to type them up and print them out.
Then I had another thought. It might be nice to make the verse for the inside of the lid look like a scroll. But how to do that? And what should I do about names for the outside of the boxes? How I did the scroll thing, I'm really not sure. You can believe me or not, but to this day I have never again figured out how to recreate it.
As for the rainbow colored names I wound up gluing to the tops of the boxes, that was something I accidentally stumbled upon. Again, I cannot tell you how. All I can say is that it happened while I was trying to do something else. Suddenly, by some divinely engineered fluke, there was Word Art on my screen, a feature of my computer software I had no idea even existed until that moment in time.
And so step by step the Lord guided me through the process (by way of that still small voice within, as well as the above mentioned "accidents"), and the finished product was more than I had dared to hope for. Never would I have imagined that I could have put something like this together without a real live person to show me how.
Now I'm not comparing my boxes to the wonderful works of art I saw while visiting the blogs of OHOW participants several weeks ago, but I'm still amazed at the way it all turned out. In fact, I'm posting a picture of the outside of the box, as well as the inside of the lid, so you can see for yourself. Was the Lord an awesome instructor, or what?
These are the things I don't ever want to forget, and so I keep a record of them in a special notebook of remembrances I've posted about on my other blog, and that I take out and leaf through every once in a while.
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