Real People, Real Lives...

   As I sit here this early morning, I think of two sets of people, whose lives entered mine on yesterday. But first let me set the stage.

   On Sunday, after church, we traveled to Chattanooga, where we both grew up, to primarily see a lady that had been our friend for many years. We spent the day Monday visiting with her and some others that are important in our lives. We tried to cram in as much as we could in those hours, because we travel back home today. A short time, but an important one for us.

   Our primary visit was to a rehab facility where our 93 year old friend was recovering from a fall and a resultant broken hip. We feared for what we would find, for we knew that having this happen that late in life, the results are many times less than hopeful. We found a lady doing her best to be cheerful in spite of the circumstances, relating with kindness to those around her, not only friends, but staff trying to help her. Her life has always been marked with concern for others, and this setback has not seemed to dim all of that.

   Then we went to have lunch with a couple that seem to always want to do something for us when we are in town. She fixed a great lunch and insisted that we join them, where we shared the friendship that we had enjoyed for many, many years. We ate and laughed together, and it was a great time.

   Then on to another visit with a family member who was in an assisted living facility close by. Even if her memory was not as sharp as it used to be, she was in good spirits and she was glad to have us put some diversion into her normal day.

   Our last stop was to see some folks with whom we had partnered in ministry with for many years. They are still active in a work that is important in the spreading of the Gospel via television and the internet. Sometimes, when we get older, the purposes of our lives get lost in wonder as to why we are still on this earth, but not these people. They are active and busy with the role God has given them to play in His kingdom..

   After a snack supper, as we were still full from the great lunch, we sat and watched an episode of a PBS show that we had gotten involved in over the past month. Downton Abbey, a BBC production and a story of an English family after World War I, had occupied some of out thoughts for a few weeks now, and we wanted to see how they sorted out some of their many problems. We had been drawn into those lives portrayed on the screen, just as we had those others, those real people, during the Monday we had spent here in Tennessee.

   How easy it is to get caught up in fictional lives, lives that do not really mean anything to us, and let the real people and real lives take a back seat. How easy to let our lives be transported into another world, one that is entertaining to us, but not really ours, and forget the story that we are living in, a place that God has placed us in for His purpose.

   All this is not to say that we should not be moved by characters on a small screen, God may have placed that story in our lives to show us something, too, but the stories of those real people, ones that we actually know, are far more important. We can interact with them, and we can be used in those lives to make a difference, just as they can in ours. God has coordinated those encounters for a purpose, both for them and for us, and it seems up to us to at least give those the importance they deserve.

   As I think of those real people that occupied a place in our day yesterday, I read again the Psalmist's prayer of this morning.

   "The Lord is the strength of his people;
he is the saving refuge of his anointed.
Oh, save your people and bless your heritage!
Be their shepherd and carry them forever."

   I would wish the same for those folks in the television story also, but, alas, theirs is happening in the past, not the present, and I surely can't go back and live there, even if I had a notion to.

   Mike and Martha or Matthew and Mary? I'll take the ones that fixed the real lunch.