Robin Smiley @revrmsmiley - Twitter Profile

over 3 years ago

I’ll tell you a story this morning, you with the time to read it. It’s a story involving my bff and me. We met 43 years ago early in our marriages when our firstborns were babies. We both needed part-time jobs but somewhere we could take our kids. We each applied to teach Mother’s Day out at a nearby church. We were paired up as team-teachers for the two year-olds. We were different in a myriad of ways. She’d been a proper church girl and I’d been a church girl mess but we both loved Jesus with our whole young hearts. Within two weeks we had a bond that to this day is thick as blood. Helped raise each other’s kids. Know each other’s secrets. If any of you read my forward to @HeatherTDay’s book, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I talk about this friend in it. She’s the one I would go to a number of mornings after Keith left for work and tell her I was just stopping by to say goodbye because I was leaving Keith and heading to my mother. She would say, well, let me fix you some coffee before you go. Then lunch. Then I’d still be there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and decide it was too late to drive two hours to my mother with the kids and I better go on home and fix supper. Keith would say, how was your day? And I’d think to myself smarty-like, well, it was good because I left you today. To this day, my friend and I text on my and Keith’s anniversary. Because it took all three of us and Jesus for Keith and me to make it. Her name is Johnnie but pretty early in, I began calling her John-John and then it morphed to JJ and that’s what I’ve called her for years. She calls me her best and dearest. We have each seen the other go to Hades and back countless times. Endure much pain. We have also laughed until we cried together. We served in women’s ministry together for years and it was her group I first tried writing Bible studies for. We’ve also seen things differently. Saw 2016 differently. But now to the point. I texted her something this morning at 6:20. She texted me right back and we went back-and-forth for about 15 minutes then I asked her, JJ, had you been up having your quiet time before I texted you? Yes. And I cried. Because so had I. It washed over me like a flood. I said, JJ, look how Jesus has carried us. All these years, these two very flawed women and, I’m telling you truly, so many of our friends, just getting up early in the morning, reading scripture and praying then going on with our day, doing our best at trusting. It was our way. We had so many problems. Still do. But through thick and thin, Jesus just kept carrying us. Nothing flashy about it: Women who were young once, writing in their prayer journals and underlining scripture. Women in their late 60s now. Writing in their prayer journals and underlining scripture. I said to her, it has been a good way of life, hasn’t it, JJ?? A good way to live, right? Yes, she said. Has he not seen to us, JJ? He has. It’s not that it’s been a profitable way to live in regard to getting our desires. Many of our prayers seemed answered with silence or with “no.” Many situations didn’t come out as we hoped. But we got something more than answers. We got Jesus. We developed a relationship with Jesus that was dearer than any bond with flesh and blood. We found Someone, each in her own journey, no amount of trouble or success or busyness could ever take from us. Our fate was sealed. This approach to life. This way of trying to view the world most days after viewing the Lord 1st on the pages of scripture. If I had life to do all over again, I would do so many things differently. I have deep regrets. Made many mistakes. But this one thing I would keep. This daily—or mostly daily—appointment. Because, somehow through it, Jesus kept me at him. Kept JJ at him. There’s so much I don’t know. So much I don’t get. But I know who’s gotten me through. I’m not saying I think. I’m saying, I know. Only one thing in my life has never unraveled. Jesus, my anchor within the veil.

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RevRMSmiley retweeted

Christine Caine

@ChristineCaine

over 3 years ago

Jesus endured pain, shame, torture, humiliation, and all the sin of the world on that hill in Golgatha. He paid our debt in full so that we have nothing to owe. We are forever forgiven, forever loved, forever redeemed, forever reconciled to God because of what Jesus did.