blessed

Today, while I sat writing, the phone rang. The caller ID listed MN Teen Challenge. I answered it because I had just recently signed on to make a regular monthly donation.

The man on the other end of the line identified himself as Steven and said this wasn't a solicitation call but a thank you call. He said that he wanted to let me know how donations change lives like his. He shared his testimony. He is a 47 year old man who has lost everything to drug addiction (including his wife and twin daughters). He has been through multiple treatment plans and nothing worked. Recently, he became a Christian and his mother suggested he try a faith based treatment facility and so he entered MN Teen Challenge.

He then told me he was priviliged to work in the call center because it gave him the opportunity to pray for the donors. He asked me what I wanted to pray for. I tried to think of something - we have had so many answered prayers I felt not pressing concern and so I asked him to pray of my girls and my skills as a mother.

He prayed at length with great heart. It was a beautiful experience.

It rather ties in with my thoughts on Sunday morning. As my relationship with God my Father and Christ my Savior deepens, I am more and more drawn to eternity. I am anxious for it. Not in the way that I want to die but in the way that I am ready for it when God is ready for me to be there.

I looked around church and as I viewed the faces around me - I could almost feel what it would be like to be the bride of Christ - when we are all complete and one. Can you even begin to imagine - the joy?

One of my favorite lines in Amazing Grace is the line "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." For some reason, I always sense the living community and body of Christ's Bride in that line more than power of singing His praise. To be perfected in the body and to sing...what Glory!!