Sunday Scribbles

 

A usual Sunday morning here in the Big House would mean rounds at 9:00am instead of 8:00am.  It would mean that I would probably try to make something for us for breakfast before we nurses joined the others on the 6^th floor for a time of singing a few praise and worship songs and praying together before we ate lunch as a group.  Usual would be only one or two interruptions to run check on children or answer an ayi’s question.  But this is not a usual Sunday morning.  This morning I find myself alone in the Big House…by alone I mean without other foreign staff/family.  I stood on the steps and waved goodbye to the Martin family as they drove off this morning headed for Beijing and without the other nurses in house I felt alone- I should be getting used to this feeling!  I poked my head into a couple nurseries double checking a few little ones as I made my way to a quiet spot.  Praise music playing in the background I reached for my Bible and out fell the notes…you know all those little pieces of paper that you jot things on when you are sitting and listening.  I rarely have the opportunity to attend a fellowship where a message is being taught so you better believe that when I do there are scribbled notes here and there on whatever scraps of paper I can find and they are tucked away in the pages to be gone over again.  So now here I sit with these notes.  I turn them over in my hands reading edges and borders with things like:

Ø  Abide in Christ really abide in Him- when we are living in a foreign land, far from what is familiar, we are at home if we are abiding in Him.  “Abide Consistently, Obey Instantly.”

Ø  In abiding there is the promise of a Helper, and the promise God made to His people still rings clear, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it.” (Jeremiah 31:33b) Am I learning that Law well enough for God to write it deep unto my heart and soul so that I am able to obey instantly His truth?

Ø  How do I react to truth?  “Men stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” –Winston Churchill  

Ø  Vocation or Occupation… It is not one in the same but rather the finer points that separate one from the other.  One is simply a job that you do, while the other is what you spend your life and energy for.  There is a difference seen in who and why you do either and or both.  There were scrawls along the edge of the page…Nursing here has it become my vocation rather than my occupation?  Often the nursing that I do feels as if it is the only value that I have and that my occupation of being a nurse becomes the priority over the vocation I have as a member of the Body of Christ, a blood bought bond servant of the Most High God.  My skill set is not where my value lies.  Words ringing true reminding me that I have a vocation that has an eternal value and that I need to focus on that… hooray for reminders in the scribbles and scripts that make me think about and consider the hard stuff.