Walking Softly

During summers when my children were small, they would often go to play in the Circle, a town park near my parents house. Today it is landscaped and beautified but then it was a simple scruffy open area covered with sand and random tufts of grass.The grass and other plant life was in short supply then but the cactus flourished. Although my girls went barefoot we would remind them to put shoes on if going to the circle. No one had patience for the adults when their friends called. We spent a good deal of time picking cactus out of small dirty feet. One particular evening, I remember Ariel, our second oldest, being carried home by her big sister, covered in cactus needles and crying. Once we got her calmed down, we laid her on the kitchen table, and one parent fed her popcorn while the other took tweezers to her feet. Some operations in life demand both great compassion and gentle conniving. And in life, there is always unavoidable cactus. We can only pray we are surrounded by folks who will use their cunning and heart to see us through.

"Some people came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they did not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up to the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus." Luke 5:19

May this be the day when we are like the people who found ways around the crowds, around the confusion, around the clear barriers so that others might be right in front of Jesus. God does not create the barriers, but we sure let them partition off our lives and our love. May God grant me the wisdom and insight to imagine beyond all human barriers. May we all be for one another, the people who don't give up when we have been shuttled aside, thrown to the back of the crowd, or lost in the depths of pain and confusion. And may we, when surrounded by impossible hurdles, remember that God is always sending us companions who will do anything to see us through - including dropping us through the roof to Jesus' feet.