Monday, February 12, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Bless every home
In Austin our apartment complex has 166 apartments with around 225 occupants, not including dogs, cats, lizards or snakes. We found an app called “Bless Every Home,” and today we had the chance to pray for Donna, Adam, Hannah and Mary, along with two “unknown residents.” When you choose to sign up with Bless Every Home, your name and apartment number goes into the pool.
Consider it all joy when you encounter trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Bless Every Home reminds me of Samaritan Ministries, another collection of people where each person or family sends a check each month to someone else in the group who has sustained insurable injuries or illnesses. In another case of principle before privilege, there are moral and church-going criteria that must be met before you are allowed into that pool. Once you’re in, though, the cost is far lower than insurance, and the experience is far more personal.
Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.
We sent checks and cards to countless people over the years and received them occasionally ourselves. Margaret’s thousands of dollars of cataract surgery, for example, was paid for by folks who belonged to Samaritan, for example. And the notes she received along with the checks were often touching, sympathetic, and prayerful.
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial. Having stood the test that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
Our culture cries out for community. Our bodies need to be touched, our minds need to be challenged, our spirits need communion with other people in what Christians call the “body of Christ.” Solitude and felt community are like my right and left hand. Like my hearing and my sight. Like taking a step, which generally requires two legs, not one. The balancing act for each of us is different. And the steadiness rarely stays right for long. Too much of one, then too much of the other.
This prayer from a distance, which I do alone, reaches out spiritually and sometimes physically to others from my living room. When I walk outside, I think of encountering one of those I’ve prayed for. And who have prayed for me. Because they have our names too. When I step outside into a quiet parking lot, it’s easier to imagine God with me, and with those I see and say hello to.
Henri Nouwen says, “It might seem strange, but God wants to find me as much as I want to find God. God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn’t move, and expects his children to come to him.” This God looks for me, from the inside of my eyelids, even as he searches out all the other 225 residents of Evolve Apartments @ Arboretum in Austin.
To say nothing of all the innocent animals.
Be kind to me, Lord, and I shall live.
 (James 1, Psalm 119, John 14, Mark 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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