Personal Mission Statements

I received an e-mail once from a colleague noting that when God takes something from your grasp, He’s not punishing you; he’s merely opening your hands to receive something better. Try as I might, I had a difficult time accepting this concept at first. It’s hard to believe that God ever says “No” to our prayers, though if you think about it, He must do so at times! (Can you imagine getting EVERYTHING you’ve ever prayed for your entire life? Just by the time you’re 20 you’d have an accumulation of baggage that’d desperately need purging for the sake of your own mental health!)

Once upon a long time ago, when I was but a naïve girl, I had notions of becoming a wife and mother, which of course I now have been for more than twenty years. But in my fertile, active imagination, I saw myself wed to an individual I’m still familiar with, though not particularly close to. As the years have waxed and waned, I’m often reminded that allowing God to guide my footsteps has had tremendous rewards in this area as well as any other. This past Sunday the sermon caught me by the throat and shook me into realizing just HOW God had “opened my hands to receive something better!”

Thank you Lord for the gifts of my spouse and our children; gifts that, had you answered my unspoken pleas nearly thirty years ago, I wouldn’t have today. When it comes to my life’s mission statement (explored in our reading of Whitney Kuniholm’s The Essential Jesus), I think the guiding passage in my life (and hubby’s as well) would have to be Mark 10:13-16.

“And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and

His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” (KJV)