Mother Lovejoy

Oh, what a lesson the Lord has taught me this morning. I have been so blind to a gift He’s been giving me because it wasn’t wrapped as I expected it to be. I haven’t recognized an answer to prayer because the answer was not as I imagined.

For some time I’ve been asking the Lord to give me the gift of worship – to allow me to know the joy of offering Him pure and selfless love and adoration which He so deserves. But I’ve had my own idea of how that gift would look.

At the same time, I’ve been struggling with the daily routine of my care for Peter’s mother. Mother Lovejoy  is 95 and has Alzheimer’s, and as her body slows down, and her mind becomes dimmer, she requires more of my love and care.

This morning I read a poem by Amy Carmichael, written at a time when she must have also been longing to offer God the gift of deep and heartfelt worship. She says, “Would that I…could invent some goodly instrument, passing all yet contrived to worship Thee, and send a love song singing over land and sea.” But for Amy also, the needs of others were immediate and demanding. She writes of a call that “clamors about my door, and bids me run to meet some human need.” And yet, hear God’s encouragement to her that became my own: “My child, be comforted, dear is the offering of melody, but dearer far – love’s lowliest ministry.”

God had been answering my plea for opportunities to offer Him pure worship, but they came, not in the moments of stillness, but of service. What I saw as interruptions to worship, were instead opportunities for worship.

“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these…you did for me.”  Matthew 25:40

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