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evotionals |
Looking Up Takes on New Significance
As these days of challenge unfold, not just in Haiti but across our world, I remember again and again something that gripped my heart, mind and spirit one day in 1970. It happened on the way to work at my new job.
The new job meant returning to my writing. I was to be World Vision’s writer as it opened its doors in Canada for the first time. Getting to work meant bicycling up one of Scarborough’s main roads because, after 15 years as a stay-at-home mom, I was determined to get into the best shape possible and the WVC office was just ten minutes away by bike.
My job with World Vision was full of thrilling promise as my favorite genre of writing was finding stories of Christians who loved the Lord and were serving Him effectively. Now, through World Vision, I was able to share the stories of such Christians taking God’s loving-kindness to disaster victims in the third world, as it was then called. What an awesome privilege to appeal to the legendary Canadian compassion for response to such immense need.
This one particular morning on my way to work, storm clouds began gathering overhead so I pedaled a little faster than usual as I approached the Highway 401 overpass through the early morning traffic. I was thinking with the certain kind of heaviness I so often felt as I pored over the heart-wrenching reports from WVC workers overseas. If I felt like that over these situations that it was my job to publicize, how did the Lord feel? Jesus saw and dealt with far more misery in this world of ours than I would ever get to know. He had experienced every expression of human sin and tragedy on the cross and He had conquered it all. Even as I focused my attention on fast stopping cars at the red light that awesome truth sharpened in my mind.
Then, in that instant, there at the highway 401 overpass stoplight at Victoria Park Avenue in Scarborough Ontario, the clouds broke in a way I had never seen before. There was a magnificent majesty about the scene as the sky opened to reveal bright billowing clouds that suddenly stilled. It was as though Jesus’ latter day reign were to be ushered in right there, right then in those billowing clouds. It was as though He was about to descend in triumph to this earth He had left and to which He would one day return as He had promised.
Poised as I’d been there at the light, one foot on the ground steadying my balance, the other on my bike pedal, I was oblivious to lights, cars and traffic in the face of that heart-pumping revelation.
As the light changed to green, car horns broke through my consciousness. I waved, smiled and got back to the business of getting to work all in one piece. At World Vision chapel time that morning, I joyfully shared my highway experience that had brought such expectation and the freedom to lavish grateful praise and devotion on our coming King as never before.
A heightened compassion and sense of privileged responsibility to be in God’s will that was fostered at that moment has never left me. It underscores my passion for using the means of expression He has given His children to share Jesus.
Forty years later, I thrill to hear the chorus of that prophetic song,
Behold He comes, riding on the clouds,Shining like the sun, at the trumpet call.
Lift your voice, it’s the year of Jubilee
For out of Zion’s Hill, Salvation comes!
Last week, as we hurried to make out our cheque for the World Vision Canada work in disaster-torn Haiti, that prophetic picture high in the clouds representing Jesus’ Latter Day return kept repeating itself in my mind’s eye. Surely the trauma in Haiti is another indication of the devastation to come to this earth before Jesus’ soon return.
Perhaps you too may have seen that promise in similar skies and thrilled to the thought of Christ’s return on the clouds one day. And who knows when that glorious day of “tomorrow” will be?
Other Nan McKenzie Kosowan Devotionals
