Good morning…
So many of us have seen and loved the movie Same Kind of Different As Me, yet there is one sacred moment I miss from the book that did not appear in the Hollywood version.
“Early in the morning, the doorbell rang,” writes Ron Hall on page 182. “When I opened the door, I saw Denver standing there, ragged, looking like a vagrant who had not slept. But his eyes were different this time – blank and hollow, almost as if he were in shock. I hugged him, but he only stood there, as though he was too exhausted to respond.
He kept his head low and for a couple of minutes, wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘I didn’t come for no coffee or no visit,’ he said as we took seats at the kitchen table again. ‘I come to deliver a word from the Lord.’
By this time, my towering faith had crumbled. The experts had failed. I had failed. And God, it appeared, was on the verge of failing, too. The God who promised that whatever we ask for in faith would be done in heaven had not delivered…
‘Mr. Ron, I’ve been out on a hill overlookin the city all night long, and I heard from the Lord. He said Miss Debbie’s body is cryin out for paradise, but the saints here on earth has a chain around her and won’t let her go. So the Lord told me to come and break the chain.’
I didn’t speak, but flashed back to Deborah’s violent seizures, her crying out. Was she crying out for paradise? And I wondered what ‘the chain’ could be and who were the saints? Later, I learned that thirty of Deborah’s friends had gathered in our yard the evening before and, linking hands, encircled our home to pray that God would heal her.
Denver continued: ‘The Lord also told me to tell Miss Debbie that she could lay down her torch, and the Lord told me to pick it up. So, Mr. Ron, out of obedience to God, I’m here to break the chain, and I gon’ ask you…to pray with me to break it.’
After nineteen months of praying for a miracle, it seemed strange now to be praying for God to take Deborah. But as I began, new promises from Scripture came to my lips unbidden. ‘Father,’ I prayed, ‘help us as a family to fully give Deborah over to You. Help us trust that You have ordained from the beginning the number of our days and that You won’t take Deborah until she has completed the number You have ordained for her.’
When we finished, Denver drilled me with a stare, and surprised us with words that seemed to contradict his prayer. “Still, Miss Debbie ain’t goin nowhere till her work on earth is through.’”
Our time on earth is brief; the number of our days is already decided by You (Job 14:5, CEV).
When cancer ravages the body of a person we love, there is a sacred moment when our prayers shift from “Heal miraculously,” to “Please welcome home.”
…Sue…
