Shining hour

A few weeks ago a friend of mine, whom we'll call Alice, celebrated her birthday. Perhaps everyone has weak spots in his or her armor, and the particular way that Satan gets to Alice is by constant inner rap songs of worthlessness. Alice fights these attacks with the Word of God. She dares to take sides with God against her own self-evaluation.

On her birthday, Alice happened to be walking down the main street of Glenside on the way to pray with another woman. As she passed the Catholic church, she noticed that the wall out front had been defaced by hateful anti-Catholic graffiti. She got the idea to enlist her prayer partner's help to bring buckets and brushes to the scene and to scrub it clean. Very soon afterward, a flock of blue-and-white uniformed school children led by their teacher walked past the church and the wall.

Alice told me the effect this had on her: She felt the pleasure of God. She felt that if she had been born only to do this one act-to erase a defiling word and prevent it from entering into the souls of innocents-it was a good work and she was the workmanship of God (Ephesians 2:10) in this moment.

It is interesting to me that my friend Alice is a gifted poet, and that the word for "workmanship" in this Ephesians verse is the Greek "poema." Thus, Alice is a writer of poems, and Alice is also God's "poem" that He is writing of her life.

See Alice write her verse to the glory of God. See Alice come against the writings of Satan. It was a good and memorable birthday after all, a shining hour like those recorded for our encouragement and emulation in Hebrews 11. Like those Old Testament saints, Alice, by faith, carried soapy water to an obscene message of Satan and blotted it out to the glory of God.