I mentioned over a month ago about my painful hip. I had hoped it would heal quickly but day after day and night after night the irritating ache continued unabated.
It was a ‘deja vu’ experience as I recalled late last year the two month irritating ‘rash’ journey of uncomfortable days and troubled nights with my rising time and again from a disturbed doze to try and find some relief from the incessantly itchy rash!
I wondered if with my painful hip I would make it to the Glory in Duluth event.
A scripture came to mind, ‘By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff.’ (Heb.11;21)
Not that I thought I was dying🙂………but I had visions of my being on stage, having to lean on a staff as I lead people in worship
….and not just any staff.
I have been given 4 staffs by people ever the years. As I checked them I realized only one would really work for me in our home, the one with a rubber stopper on the end. (Pictured above) The stopper would prevent this staff sliding on our wooden floors.
Interestingly this staff had been bequeathed to me by our friend Carolyn, Mark Iverson’s widow, who had also gifted me Mark’s moccasin’s which I featured recently on my ‘sprinting’ blog.
How ironic!…….I now wondered if I would ever walk normally again, unassisted by a staff, much less sprint, again!
0ne morning in our “Restroom” I got a Revelation🙂
Father said to me that I was having a Jacob to Israel experience with him.
I hobbled back to the table and sat down down again with Hilary to do our morning reading from the Book of Mysteries……..
I did end up making it to the Duluth event. What’s more, I was recovered enough to lead – without the staff.
We were to open. ‘Shabach’ had ‘set up’ on stage, so we approached to find our positions. I was assigned the middle mic. I looked down….. and there leaning against the stand………..was a staff!
It belonged to Nate, the lead singer. He lifted it out of my way.
At the end I took a photo of where he had placed it at the back of the stage.
The staff seemed to me to be leaning into the cross, formed by the back panels.
I knew it was Father highlighting to me again that those things which we experience as irritations in this life, are meant, in order to produce in us, the imitation of Christ, as we identify with him, in his sufferings.
How appropriate for this Glory in Duluth event……..
‘Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ
……if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.’ (Rm.8:17)
Or as Paul put it again elsewhere,
“….that I might know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the (out) resurrection from (among) the dead.’