A White Towel

Tonight Jeff and I visited a church in West Linn. We’ve been there three times and every time I have cried my way through the whole service.  I know it’s not that the church is magic, but through incredible worship and great teaching, God has just profoundly ministered to me in personal ways each time.  Plus, we’ve connected with people right away.  It just feels like a breath of fresh air (plus Dutch loves playing in the nursery–how can you top that?).  It’s fun to have a Saturday night church service where we just show up and receive.  I love serving and ministering, but it’s sure a blessing to just sit and breathe in sometimes too, you know?

Tonight there was a guest speaker, a guy from Woodlands church in Texas, associate pastor to Kerry Shook who wrote One Month to Live. I find it highly unfortunate that Joel Osteen endorses this book…because it really sounds like a great creative tool.  Not that he ruins it, but I think of Ecclesiastes 10:1 ” Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment, And cause it to give off a foul odor; So does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor.”  Sorry, not that Joel Osteen is a dead fly, but I find it hard to believe that Jesus would preach Your best life now…in fact I distinctly remember Jesus saying our best life comes later…

Anyway, I’m not letting the endorsement ruin the fact that God greatly ministered to me tonight.  The guest speaker has himself been greatly impacted and he shared the story of TerriLynn (you can click there to watchher video testimony).  After 30 years of marriage, her husband served her divorce papers on Christmas day. Her two sons were away at college, and she was left alone–he husband took everything.  Three months later, she received a call that her son had been murdered.  Murdered.  In three months everything was stripped away.  She read through this book and took to heart the part about Forgive Completely.  She was so challenged she chose and continues to work through real, true, complete forgiveness.  So much so that when she was allowed to make a statement at her son’s murderer’s trial (he pled guilty), she stood and read a page long statement about grace, forgiveness, and the gospel.  She prayed for her son’s murderer, and proclaimed that if his life was changed, saved by Christ, and used to turn others to Jesus, then her son’s death was not in vain.  Her statement was so incredible that the judge requested a copy, insisting that he’d never heard anything of its kind in his entire career as judge.

As a result, she prayed for her son’s murderer.  He contacted the prison chaplain and gave his life to Christ.  Weeks later he was baptized.  She has remained in contact with him.  She has come to know that he had no family, no parents to raise him, no one.  After several months of communication with her, he timidly asked if she would please consider, if she would not be offended, that since he had never had a mother, if he would call her Mom. She agreed. She has committed to praying for him, as her own.  She has rejoiced seeing him grow in Christ, earn a GED, and begin sharing his faith with others.  The genuine joy in her life is astonishing…as if he were her own son, when in reality he is the one who took the very life of her own son.  That is amazing grace.

Understanding forgiveness.  Our text for the service was John 13, Jesus washing the disciples feet. And the message on forgiveness, of understanding how GREAT, how COMPLETE, how AWESOME is our forgiveness in CHrist, brought me to tears, weeping through the songs we sang at the close, as we took part in communion and shared in CHrist’s body and blood.  Oh that Jesus would never let my heart grow calloused to how great is His gift!!  Oh that I would never be the ungrateful servant who refuses to forgive others when I have been forgiven so much!  Oh that He would keep my heart tender and soft and responsive to Him.

At the end of the sermon, we were each given a small white towel, spotless, brilliantly white, clean.  It was meant as a reminder of Jesus’ humble act, washing the disciples feet, but also as a reminder of how spotlessly brilliantly clean we are in Christ. Though our sins were as scarlet He’s made us white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).  How perfect and spotless this white towel is, that I clutched to my chest as I thought of my Jesus, who gave His all so my towel would be white.

So I’m thankful tonight. I haven’t read the book, not sure if I will (I know, goes back to that thing with me and only reading dead people’s books).  But I was certainly ministered to by the story of TerriLynn, of her remarkable example of extending the grace that we have received, and of a fresh reminder, in the form of a towel, of Christ’s effective and glorious work on the cross.  We’ve been forgiven much.  Lord, let us love much.