Necessary Blessings

My daughter is wheeled out of the ER, and I watch her go. I cannot go with her, so the nurse stays with me.

We wait for her to return and for the results of the CT, and we talk about the changes in medicine.

"If it is her appendix, they might be able to treat it with antibiotics," Sandra, an answer-to-prayer RN, says. "In the past, we've taken out tonsils and appendix and anything else we didn't think was necessary, but we don't do that now. We are far more conservative. We assume if it is there, there is a reason, even if we don't know what it is."

I nod. "If it wasn't necessary, God wouldn't have put it there."

She smiles. "Exactly. Who knows why that appendix is there? If it is there simply to teach her empathy, it is necessary."

The words sink deep.

"If it is there simply to teach her empathy, it is necessary."

Isn't that it? Our whole purpose on this planet? The reason for this stop in the road of eternity?

I've been one who claimed the verses of blessing, declared the prosperity of adopted status. I've been the one who said as the child of the King I am entitled to more, but the greatest of the Sons came not to be served but to serve, to give Himself, to live a life for others.

Is that not the real purpose? To become the blessing?

We pray, "Lord, use me," but we expect Him to leave our comfort zones alone.

Instead, He takes us at our word...the one that says, "Use me. Mold me. Make me what I need to be for you. Be You through me."

And He touches our jobs.
And He touches our families.
And He touches our finances.
And He touches our teenage daughters' appendix.

He sits with us through unemployment.
He sits with us through divorce.
He sits with us through bankruptcy.
He sits with us during emergency surgery in the early hours of the morning.

And sometimes things turn out the way we want, and sometimes--God help us--they don't.

And in the dark places we hit our knees,

and we can cry out,

"God, why this?"

or we can cry out,

"God, use this!"

We either become bitter because it happened to us,

or

we become the blessing because it happened to us.

And who knows what blessing lies in the appendix of a teenage girl on her way to get a CT scan in the early morning hours? The blessing she can't see through the tears of pain. Who knows what blessing is being deposited even as her appendix is removed?

I can't tell you for sure. All I can tell you is...

It is the necessary one.