I couldn’t sleep last night.  This never happens to me.  Well, almost never.  But I had some of Chick-fil-A’s  wonderful sweet tea entirely too late last night and the caffeine in that stuff wouldn’t go away. 

Today was an unusual Thursday.  Usually we meet at a welcoming house up on Sandy Bend Road for Bible study, and the many children run and play while we ladies congregate around a big kitchen table and talk about Life and what God’s Word has to say to our lives right now.  There’s been lots of laughter, lots of tears, and I come away inspired by these young women who are King’s Daughters and want, with all their hearts, to please Him.  Right now we are studying a book on Hospitality that is stretching me in ways that sometimes causes me to squirm and re-evaluate some of the things I’ve always done, some of the things I want to do, and at other times, gives me affirmation that I feel I desperately need.

But today there was much sickness among the little people.  And our capable young babysitter was rather unavailable because her mother suspects that the two youngest of the brood of nine have whooping cough and is calling for a quarantine of the house.  This is one precious young mother that I don’t think I ever envy, and I especially don’t now.  Nine children in the house and whooping cough?  Dear Lord Jesus!  Have mercy!

So I got to stay home today.  I worked on laundry, I paid some bills, I cooked some chicken, I baked some bread. I “puttered around” and did homemaking kinds of things that do my heart good.  I had a chat with a neighbor and tonight had a significant talk with our “Little Latin Lupe Lou.”  Hispanic life in slower, lower Delaware is anything but “slower” (but it certainly is “lower.”)  My heart continues to break for the turns and twists of this young woman’s life. 

Tonight, there are a great many of things that wring my heart.  In our neighborhood right now there are several significantly ill people.  When I was thinking about what I could do, I felt so ashamed at how little I have cared for the physical needs of the people within sight of my windows.  People are literally dying. . . and some of them without the Hope of Heaven.

What was it that Jesus said? “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink;  I was a stranger, and ye took me in;  Naked, and ye clothed me, I was sick, and ye visited me;  I was in prison, and ye came unto me . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  Matt 25:35-36, 40b.  The thing that grabs me the most of this passage is the “shoe leather” Christianity.  There are needs in this old world.  God’s people have the wherewithal to meet those needs —  and in meeting some of those physical needs, the doors open for the Words of Life to be spoken.  How I pray that I do not fail God or these people whom He has put into my back yard.

I believe that I will sleep tonight.  There is much to accomplish yet tomorrow before the weekend and the many things that demand our attention, but this precious day was an incredible gift and for this, I give joyful praise!