God Loves Me

This past Friday, I stepped outside to get pictures of the rain for my next book.  The heavier rain had tapered off to a simple drizzle and I was mesmerized, as I frequently am, by the little things, the ripples created by the raindrops in the puddles, the raindrops themselves suspended on blades of grass.  It was peaceful and a reminder of how important it is for my spiritual self, to get out in nature and feel God’s presence, even if I’m only a few steps from the backdoor.

I hadn’t brought my phone with me while I was outside, but I was close to my phone that when it rang, as it wound up doing that morning, my watch buzzed and chimed to let me know.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I was pretty sure who it was.  Every time I publish a book, I start getting spammed by scammers from overseas trying to get me to give them money to publish and market my book.  I ignore most of these calls, but occasionally, I feel in a good enough mood to answer the phone and warn them that they are breaking the law (I have no idea if that’s true) and that I will report them if they continue their harassment.  The last time I answered one of these calls a couple of months ago, I had the caller so frustrated with me getting him off his script that he hung up on me.

Once or twice I have thought about the fact that given all the books I write these days are about God, I should use these phone calls with scammers as a witnessing opportunity.

And when the phone rang this past Friday, when I was feeling calm and filled with God from my time outside, I decided to answer the phone, (or answer my watch in this case).  I didn’t know what I would say to caller, but I figured I would start by asking if they had read my book.  I mean why should I do business, I would ask them, if they hadn’t even read my book.

Because of the rain and because I was talking Dick Tracy-style on my watch, I was having a hard time hearing the man on the other end.  I had no idea which one of my books he was talking about and he wasn’t taking a breath to let me talk to him or even hang up semi-politely. 

I was just about ready to interject my question about whether or not he had read my book, when he said something that no one in the hundreds of calls like these that I had answered over the years had ever said to me.

“I read the synopsis of your book on Amazon,” he said to me.  “And the words ‘God loves me’ really spoke to me.”

Much as I suspected, he had not read the book, but no one had ever told me they had read what my book was about and no one had ever quoted me words from the book.

I now knew exactly what book he was talking about, my latest entitled, I Wrote These Words for You. 

“I’m glad they spoke to you,” I said, somewhat hesitantly.  Was he being real with me or was this just more of the scam?  He was very off-script either way.

“I just really needed to hear those words today, ‘God loves me’” he continued.  “I’m having a hard time at home and work.”

Again, I wasn’t quite ready to believe him, though I was getting more intrigued by the second.  “You should really read my book,” I told him.  “If those words meant something to you, you need to read the book.”

And then he said something—and I can’t quite remember how he worded it—but it was something along the lines of that he would have a hard time getting a copy of the book.

At that point, I was thinking, well he’s already on Amazon, just click on the “buy it now” button, but then I remembered that these calls were from overseas—I actually got a woman to admit to me once how they ping off of cellphone towers, preferably a tower close to where you are so that you are more likely to pick up the phone.

So he was most likely not calling me from inside the United States and it hit me right then that what he was doing right then, going off script, talking to me about God, might be very dangerous for him.

“Look,” I said to him, “I hope you’re being honest with me—I’m going to assume you’re being honest with me and I want you to know that I’m praying for you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Really,” I continued, “I am praying for you right now.  I am praying that God put His hand on you, that He fill you with His spirit, that when He does fill you with that spirit that He would lift you up and put you on the path He wants you on.”

As I was talking, I felt myself getting louder and louder because I was ready to fight for this man.

As I spoke, he sometimes broke in.  He told me how much the prayers meant to him and sometimes it seemed like he was trying to get back on the script he was supposed to be on.  Perhaps so that when his employers questioned him later, because I have no doubt they either listen in live or perhaps later, but he could create a plausible deniability and insist by going back to the script, he was just playing me.

All of it just made me pray harder.

Finally, I ended the call.  I told him I would keep praying for him.  I told him to take care.  And then I hung up.

Still outside, I noticed the rain had stopped.  The air smelled sweet.  The word for it is “petrichor.”  It’s that earthly, damp dirt smell we all are familiar with after the rain.

“God loves me.”

Three words.

Three words had changed the course of that man’s day and perhaps his life.

In today’s reading from John 6:1-15, we get the feeding of the 5,000 miracle, the fishes and loaves miracle.  But what I want to focus on specifically is the part after the feeding, when Jesus tells the disciples, “Gather up the fragments.”  Now those words have a deep meaning, especially when we are told those fragments filled twelve baskets.  Numbers always have meaning in the Bible and these are no different.

But rather than go into that, I want to just focus on those words, “Gather up the fragments.”

Get the crumbs.

Nothing goes to waste.

I remember how my depression-era grandparents would practically lick the plate clean at dinner, suck every ounce of chicken off the bone, because they knew how important those crumbs were.

And yet food waste in this country is astounding and I admit to being a large part of that.

But Jesus tells the disciples, “Gather up the fragments,” because nothing goes to waste.  Nothing, not one crumb, is unimportant.

This past Friday, God fed that man on the phone with me, with spiritual crumbs.

Three words.

Of course, I know and have come to terms with the fact that my books will never be bestsellers, but that doesn’t mean that God can’t use three words from one of those books to change a man’s life a half a world away.

I confessed last week that the thing I hate/dread the most about writing my books is having to write that back cover summary.  I never feel good about anything I write in those summaries.  The words feel weak and not a good representation of the book itself.

And yet, last Friday, it was the summary that reached that man.

And even less than that.

Three words.

God loves me.

How will God use your words to reach someone today?

Amen.

The God Who Sees Me

Back when I was living in Florida, I used to wake up every morning before sunrise and go for a walk.  I loved walking in the dark, in the silence, under the stars.  I loved the way the moon seemed to follow me as I walked.  I loved how God seemed to fill all the empty spaces, the spaces that normally get filled during the day with noise and clamor, with things that seem to assault our senses, rather than God and His presence which seem to fill our senses.

For those of you wondering if me walking in the dark was safe, I can say that mostly I walked laps around my gated condo complex.  It was a well-lit parking lot.  And on the occasions when I ventured out to the street beyond the condo, I took a large flashlight with me.  The scariest things I ran into were usually giant raccoons and fence-walking possums.

And the worst I was ever hurt was the time I stepped into a sewer grate in a particularly dark and unlit portion of the parking lot.

Some mornings, I started my walk later, closer to sunrise and usually made my way out to the supersized sidewalks, large enough to accommodate golf carts, by the street.  I loved watching the sunrise.  I loved watching the green herons and the great blue herons catching breakfast by the ponds and canals.  But venturing out closer to sunrise meant encountering more people on my walk.

And in my neighborhood, it was expected that you would say “good morning” to every single person you saw, though if you happened to lap back and come across them twice, it was okay to simply smile or wave the second time around, but you had to acknowledge everyone.

And, as an introvert who enjoys her morning silent meditation walks, I admit to turning around, or crossing the street just to avoid having to interact with someone.

I want you to keep my story in the back of your mind as we begin to explore today’s reading from John 4:1-26.  Jesus and his disciples are headed to Galilee and have stopped in the Samaritan town of Sychar.  Jesus is tired, we are told and decides to sit and rest at Jacob’s Well, while the disciples head out to find food.  It is around noon.

A short time later, a Samaritan woman approaches the well and here is where it gets interesting.  Though we are given so much context about Jesus and why he is at the well, the real question is why is the Samaritan woman there.

It’s noon.  It’s the hottest part of the day.  Why is she fetching water at that moment and not earlier in the day when it’s cooler?

Biblical scholars—of which I am NOT one—seem to agree that the woman has come to the well later in the day specifically to avoid people.  Having been married five times and currently living with a man who is not her husband, she has a reputation and is most likely tired of the looks and the whispers and the micro aggressions that count as bullying in Jesus’s time.

She’s coming to the well at noon with the hope that no one will be there.

And that part I can relate to.

And so maybe I’m projecting a little when I imagine her catching sight of the well and seeing that someone is there.  And not just any someone—a man, and not just any man but a Jewish man.

Perhaps for a second, she thinks about turning around, about coming back later, but she needs the water and so she takes a deep breath, straightens her back, squares her shoulders and heads to the well, hoping to get her water without incident.

Little does she know her life is about to change forever.

It is quite right that the man at the well is no ordinary man.  Jesus shows that immediately, when he dispenses with all small talk.  No hello.  No “Boy it’s hot, isn’t it?”  Instead, he asks—no not even asks—it’s not worded as a question.  He says to her, “Give me a drink.”

But the Samaritan woman is no push-over.  To have lived the life she has lived, she has had to be very tough and so she says to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

He says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

Jesus’s response is such that she should have had goosebumps popping out on her skin even though it was the hottest part of an already hot day.

Instead, it’s clear that she is only half listening, perhaps anxious to be on her way.  She practically scoffs at his answer of living water.

“You don’t even have a bucket,” she says to him, “and the well is deep.”

Jesus explains further.  “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Now she is starting to pay attention but still not quite getting it.  She asks him for the water so she can stop coming to the well.

And then Jesus, like any good teacher who knows it’s time to try something else, asks her about her husband, even though, as he later reveals, he knows she has no husband currently.

And this is what opens the Samaritan woman’s eyes.  Much like Hagar who in Genesis 16:13, on the run from Abram and Sarai, encounters God and names Him “the God who sees me,” the Samaritan woman encounters the same God, leaving behind her water pitcher and running back into the city to announce in verse 29, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

She has been seen.

She has encountered God, there at the well named for Abraham’s grandson Jacob.

She left her home that day, hoping to be left alone, and instead she found God.

Back when I was taking my early morning, still-dark, walks, I was paradoxically wanting to be alone and yet also wanting to experience God’s presence.

And as I think back on it, I can’t think of a single morning, when I didn’t feel God’s presence.

God was everywhere and in between.  He was in the chorus of frogs singing through the wet morning air from the shadows in the wetlands.  He was in the blazing arc of the rockets that split the black sky before dawn.

And when I stood there and looked up at that endless sky, I knew, without a doubt that I was seen.

Amen.