The Lord never leaves us to struggle alone on the sanctification journey. I remember a day when Jehovah M’Kaddesh met me on the spot, differently than the way I had been depending on his helping me with my awareness habit. This is one of my favorite stories! I was in church, absolutely fuming at a woman who drove me nuts every single Sunday. She was always fidgeting, making just enough of a distraction that I could not focus on the service, and my irritation with her would ruin my attitude of worship. The irritation would bloom into anger with her incredibly annoying habit of needing to be the first to say every word in every collective prayer the congregation prayed. For some reason she would say the words a full second before anyone else rather than pray with us. It always tripped me up because I could not listen to her and read the prayer at the same time. I tried ignoring her but I just couldn’t! This particular day, she was doing it directly in front of me and I was furious enough to imagine punching her, right between the pews. Sorry honey….not Grandma’s finest hour.
Happy ending though! All of a sudden I realized the hypocrisy of my thoughts. My eyes opened wide with the shock of the shift in my thoughts. Something clicked in my head and all in a moment, I turned from anger and felt terribly ashamed of myself. “LORD!” I cried out silently, tears coming to my eyes. “Here I sit, in your house, claiming to be your daughter, hating this woman. How can this be?”. “It isn’t right, Lord! It isn’t right!” I did not feel condemned, but I did feel the weight of my inconsistency settle on me. Only for a moment.
My head was down and my eyes were tightly closed as I began to wrestle with the emotion of it, but the very next moment I heard that small, gentle voice tell me to look up. When I raised my head and opened my eyes I saw rays of sunlight streaming through the window, filtering down squarely on the woman in front of me. Her red hair was aflame with sunlight, and I heard him speak again. With relaxed enthusiasm, in a most sincere tone, he said “Isn’t it beautiful?” and I saw what he was referring to – there must have been a dozen different colors shining in her hair. I saw reds, oranges, yellows, and golds and they were indeed beautiful. It was mesmerizing. I was enthralled. In fact, it made such a visual impact on me that from then on, every time I heard her voice ‘leading the pack’, I could see those glorious colors in the light of my mind’s eye regardless of where she sat. And I would love her. I love the memory of her and her beautiful God-caressed hair to this very day.
Who could provide such a transformation so perfectly except a God of infinite love? I thought of the way the Lord had diffused the anger of the crowd who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery, without a lecture and without condemnation toward anyone. He healed me of anger and hatred toward a woman that day. Jehovah M’Kaddesh sanctified that part of me, and I was able to love that woman as he did. It has brought me such joy.
*Taken from “The Courtship of Christ”