The Tablets of Our Lives
Trying to restrain the tears in his eyes and the quiver in his lips, he prayed aloud as he held our son’s hand, “Lord, I pray he remembers his heritage as he builds his legacy.” And with those words, my husband and I released our 21-year old son to pursue his graduate degree in Tennessee, and we prepared to drive the 600 miles back to Pennsylvania.
Habakkuk 2:2 states: “The LORD replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.’” It was over fifteen years ago that I felt a clear call from God to write. I was brushing my teeth just after taking my children to the bus stop when I believe I received this clear revelation. However, being a new Christian and believer, I was not confident of the calling. So I prayed, read the Bible, and discussed it with more mature believers, and God did confirm the call in several ways.
I put my fingers to the keyboard and wrote the introduction and first chapter of a book that the Lord had laid on my heart. I gave my very rough draft to several friends, mature believers, and my husband (my greatest encourager and constructive critic), and made edits based on their input. And then those pages sat in a binder to this very day. My children were age six and nine at the time, I was at home full-time, and I was very involved in their school and their lives.
Over the past fifteen years, I have written many handwritten notes of encouragement, typed many articles for newsletters as well as whole newsletters, and worked part-time at the publications office at our local school district, but I have not had any of my writings formally published. There are times I have been very discouraged about this and have asked God to help me with this “ministry” since He was the One who laid this on my heart years ago! I tend to be an inpatient person, but my husband just kept saying, “Wait on the Lord.”
Upon first reading Habakkuk 2:2, I took the word “write” literally as words written on an ancient scroll, penned on paper, or typed onto a computer screen. However, when my husband prayed those words over our son, God spoke to my heart and said “You have written My revelation on your children’s hearts for the past fifteen years and they are My tablets who will run with it.” Years of discouragement, fear, and disappointment over my not having any writing published for Him vanished as I realized the energy poured into our two children has been my “writing ministry.”
Our daughter married a godly young man last July and in May, they moved to Virginia, where he has been called to be a youth pastor at a church plant and she is teaching literature to high school students in a private Christian school. Working with youth in ministry and at school, they will be attempting to make God’s Word plain on the tablets of these youth’s hearts so that they can run with it.
After a few difficult teenage years with our son, God has graciously allowed us to see a lot of emotional, mental, and spiritual maturity in him this past summer. He finished college in three years with a double major and is enrolled in an MBA program in Tennessee. God has blessed him with intelligence, a quick wit, and a compassionate heart. Saying goodbye was very difficult, but we know that he will be a herald who will run with God’s revelations to many people.
In I Corinthians 13, love is the theme and the apostle Paul writes that without it, the gifts of speech, prophecy, faith, generosity, and hope will all cease, be stilled, and pass away. Paul says in I Corinthian 13:1 that love is the most excellent way. As writers, whether we write our revelation on paper, online, or on the hearts of others, we need to first reflect Jesus’ sacrificial love and then make it simple and unadorned so that the “heralds may run with it.”
HOPE through chronic illness 