Power Verses…… "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says  the Lord. For as the  heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways." (Isaiah 55: 8,9))

A pastor by the name of Tom Schmidt, related the following remarkable story in a book entitled “The Life You’ve Always Wanted” by pastor and author John Ortberg.:           

 “State-run mental hospitals are not normally pleasant places. The patients are normally senile, helpless and lonely people waiting to die. I visited a particular mental hospital once or twice a week for four years,

On one particular day I was walking in a hallway I had not visited before, looking in vain for a few patients who were alive enough to receive a flower and a few words of encouragement. This hallway seemed to contain some of the worst cases, strapped onto beds or into wheelchairs looking completely helpless.

As I neared the end of the hallway, I saw an old woman strapped up in a wheelchair. Her face was an absolute horror. The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The large hearing aid over one ear told me that she was almost deaf. One side of her face was being eaten by cancer. There was a discol­ored and running sore covering part of one cheek, and it had pushed her nose to one side, dropped one eye, and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly. I later learned that this woman was eighty-nine years old and that she had been here, bedrid­den, blind, nearly deaf, and alone, for twenty-five years. This was my first introduction to Mabel.

 

I put a flower in her hand and said, 'Here’s a flower for you, Happy Mother's Day.’ She held the flower up to her face and tried to smell it, and then she spoke. Much to my surprise, her words, although somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind.” 'Thank you,’ she said, ‘It's lovely. But can I give it to some one else? I can't see it, I'm blind.'

“Of course” I replied, and I pushed her in her chair down the corridor until we found another patient. Mabel held out the flower and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.'  “This was when it dawned on me that this was no ordinary human being. Later I wheeled her back to her room and learned more about her. She had grown up on a small farm that she managed with only her mother until her mother died. Then she ran the farm alone until 1950 when her blindness and sickness sent her to the mental hospital. For twenty-five years she grew weaker and sicker.

 Mabel and I became friends and I would visit her once or twice a week for the next three years.  Some days I would read to her from the Bible, and when I would pause she would continue reciting the passage from memory, word-for-word. On other days I would take a book of hymns and sing with her, and she would know all the words of the old songs. For Mabel, these were not merely exercises in memory, she would often stop in mid-hymn and make a brief comment about lyrics she considered particularly relevant to her own situation. I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain.

After a few weeks I turned from a sense that I was being helpful to Mabel to a sense of wonder at her clarity of thought and depth of spiritual maturity, and each time I visited her I would go with pen and paper eager to write down the things she would say.

During one hectic week of final exams I was particularly frustrated because my mind seemed to be pulled in ten directions at once with all of the things that I had to do and think about. The question occurred to me,” 'What does Mabel have to think about-hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it's day or night?' “So at my next visit I asked;” 'Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?'

She replied, 'I think about Jesus.'

“This simple answer challenged me, and I thought about how difficult it was for me to think about Jesus for even ten minutes. I then asked Mabel,” 'What do you actually think about Jesus?' She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote:

“I think about how good he's been to me. He's been awfully good to me in my life, you know…..I'm one of those who in life are mostly satisfied.... Lots of folks wouldn't care much for what I think. Lots of folks would think I'm kind of old­ fashioned. But I don't care. I'd rather have Jesus. He means the world to me.”

"And then Mabel began to sing an old hymn:

Jesus is all the world to me,
My life, my joy, my all.

He is my strength from day to day,

Without him I would fall.
When I am sad, to him I go,

No other one can cheer me so.

When I am sad He makes me glad.

He's my friend.

"This is not fiction. Incredible as it may seem, a human being really lived like this said Tom. I know. I knew her. I visited her for over three years.

One day I discovered the secret of her love for Jesus. In the years of managing the family farm with her mother and then on her own, her Christian faith was at the very heart of everything she did. The simple way she lived her life, the way in which she treated people, Jesus was indeed “Her life, her joy, her all.” And that experience never left her but deepened and God brought to her mind daily, the scriptures she learned, the hymns she sang, and in her world she was an inspiration to all she came into contact with.

Just imagine for a moment being in Mabel’s condition and saying, “I think about how good Jesus has been to me. He’s been awfully good to me in my life you know…..I’m one of those who in life are mostly satisfied.”

This is the 23^rd Psalm come to life: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

The Bible says:

“……God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty……..(1Corinthians 1:27)

Most of us wouldn’t give the Mabel’s of this world a second glance; preferring to ‘hang’ on every word uttered by the powerful “movers and shakers” of this world, such as the international bankers who have plunged our world into so much chaos and turmoil of late.

Are you discovering like me, that in this world, thing are not what they seem to be, and we could in fact be listening to the wrong people?

 Do you feel convicted to know more about becoming a Christian? Click here.