The first time I met Lauren Chandler I cried. Like, for real. I just burst into a torrent of tears right in front of her.
She and her husband were kind – didn’t look at me too strangely and at least acted like they didn’t think I was a weirdo.
I was grateful.
Their family had just been through a series of sudden health scares that shook them to the core. I’d sat along the sidelines of their life watching and praying and thanking God for this couple I only new from afar. I’d thought about how this wife and mom of three young children was coping with her new reality and the bleak “what if’s” that lurked in the future. Was she anxious? Sad? Overwhelmed? Frustrated?
When I met her, she smiled a joyous, Spirit-infused grin that bubbled over with peace and calm. She took me in a warm hug and then asked about me. She. . . asked about me. In the midst of all that was happening with her and her loved ones, she was thinking . . .of me.
So, I welled up and cried because this woman was showing me what it really means to trust in Jesus.
Lauren Chandler is a worshipper, songwriter, speaker. Her album, The Narrow Place, was released in 2012 and is available through iTunes. She believes every word she is singing and teaching and impacts others even when there is not a spotlight or stage – even if it’s just through her hug and warm smile.
I’m grateful for Lauren and you will be, too.
Enjoy,
Priscilla
“Just walk it off; you’ll be fine.”
These words were not what I was hoping to hear from my dad, but apparently it’s his job to say it. The pain was still pulsing from the collision of soccer cleat and unguarded shin. It was a quick pick-up game after practice and my lower leg lost. I limped along to the sideline hoping for some compassion and got minimizing instead.
Months later (yes, months), the calcific knot that formed at impact did not dissolve as hoped. So we finally went to the doctor. He pressed the x-ray film against the screen.
“Yep. It’s broken. A hairline fracture clear through. The good news is it healed perfectly in place. There’s not much left to do.”
I’m grateful my leg didn’t heal at an awkward angle that made walking in wedges more comical than it already is. At times like these it would have been convenient to have x-ray vision. I knew something wasn’t right but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t get past flesh and blood to lay eyes on the problem.
God isn’t confined to human sight. He has x-ray vision, but not like Superman’s or the kind I could have used that day on the soccer field. Hebrews 4:13 tells us that “no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” This is a terrifying thought if we don’t know Christ. But if we know Christ, we know God’s character because Christ is “the exact imprint of His nature (Hebrews 1:3).” And what is Christ like? He willingly laid his perfect, sinless life down for His imperfect, sinful friends (myself included).
He is justice and mercy. He is good.
Since He is good, He is trustworthy even in His all-knowingness, and because of it, He can use his x-ray vision to see what’s broken inside of us. He is like a careful surgeon studying the film before He picks up the scalpel. His scalpel? In verse 12 He tells us that His word “is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” He’s not the butcher that divides the flesh to consume it; He’s the surgeon who can identify with the patient (because of His son Jesus, our sympathetic high priest mentioned in verse 15) and slice into soul and spirit to save and heal.
Being exposed is humiliating if it’s exposure for exposure’s sake. In Christ, the exposure of the sin that still makes us sick or the wounds that warp us, is for our sake and the good of our souls. May we be willing to submit ourselves to the x-ray vision of God and the healing scalpel of His word.
Lauren
