Will You Stand When Everyone Walks Away?

I have never burst into tears reading the first page of a book before. Today I did. I did not cry because it is the opening page to the true story of a man who died. Nor did I tear up because the man went to heaven. And I did not start to cry because the man is alive on earth today because of the hand of God. My eyes produced tears because when the emergency rescue workers pronounced him dead, covered him up, and turned to help the others in need at the scene of the accident, one man stood in faith and refused to stop praying. Sometimes I am the only woman still standing, just like the man who did not give up on the one pronounced dead. Sometimes I am the only one who still believes when the world around me laughs at me, questions me, judges me, and criticizes me for not giving up when everyone else did so long ago.

I will never forget the day I read the article I had written for the newspaper to my husband about asking God why He had me drive 17 hours in as single day two days after a 16 hour drive to an Ohio shelter to rescue a 5 pound dog who lived for such a short while after. “That is the distance I will go for you,” God had told me. I could see in my husband’s eyes, in his heart, his hunger to be loved like that. “Why don’t you give up on me?” my husband asked me another time. God said in the Old Testament that if He could only find one man to stand in the gap, but He couuld not. He could not find a single man who would stand. I do not know the man who died and lived again in the book I just began reading.

But I do know God is a God of resurrection. He raises people from the dead, and He raises situations that for all intents and purposes are dead. As for the rest of us, how many of us will remain standing when everyone else has walked away – and believe God wants to go the whole distance? Today, I remain standing for people, and in situations, that would cause many to ridicule me. But so long as God tells me to stand, stand I will. I stand for His perfect will.