Armor of God

The Armor of God

 

Therefore, put on the whole armor of God…. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.

Ephesians 6:13 & 17

 

As I heard those words being taught at a UMW district conference back in June of 1997, I had not the slightest notion that I would be needing God’s love and protection within hours. I had idly doodled in my notebook the words “God’s Word - God Sword.” Clever play on words, I thought to myself.

I felt renewed, recharged by the time I got home that Saturday afternoon, but even as I stepped through the door, a sense of dread overcame me. The answer machine light flashed six messages. The voices of my brothers and sister (California, Connecticut, & Georgia) told me the news: on their way home from California to Georgia, our parents had been seriously injured in a car accident in Texas. Our 12 year-old niece had died, and her mother, our sister, would not make it through the day. Another 4 year old niece had miraculously escaped with nothing more than a scratch.

My heart stopped at the news. The next two weeks were numbing as I came to feel the impact of losing our youngest sister and her oldest daughter, and of watching both my parents grieve for them as they dealt with the reality of their own life-changing injuries. Their injuries were too disabling and disfiguring to attend the funerals in California.

I accompanied them on their sad journey home on an Air Force Nightengale Mission flight, which took three days. I felt cocooned in that airplane as medical staff attended my parents' needs, and each afternoon, until we arrived at our destination, doctors and nurses checked them and made them comfortable with drugs and words of kindness.

Through it all, I continued to pray for my own needs, and for strength to do what I had to do to support them. I knew my church family back home in North Carolina, and all my friends and family, were also with me in prayer and thought. I remembered God’s Armor, the Sword of the Spirit, and I found myself standing firm at a time when I felt so utterly powerless.

There were months of recovery and surgeries for both my parents that summer and fall, and in the years that followed, neither of them would remember the goodness of the staffs at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Hospital or the county hospital in El Paso, nor the remarkable three-day journey we took on the Air Force Nightengale Mission flight to get them back home. During all this time, God’s reassurance that we were not alone kept me strong for my parents, and kept them strong for each other.

During this time of year we are so busy with making sure our families are safe and happy, fed, and gifted with presents. We want everyone we know to know how much we love them, and we fill our days with shopping, cooking, baking, wrapping presents, and visiting folks. There are people in the hospital even as I write this, in pain, separated from their families, wishing they were home, dealing with a loss, suffering in any number of ways. Take some time today to send out a prayer of intercession for them, make a phone call, or send a card to someone who is taking care of such a one.

 

Prayer: Almighty God, you never promised to take away the suffering, nor to eliminate hardships. When we carry you in our hearts, minds, and souls, it is like wearing the Armor of God. Nothing can destroy what God has created. Amen.