My first teaching job in Illinois was in a run-down building in a small classroom that housed 40 or more middle schoolers. Every 48 minutes, teens would cram into the crumbling room.
When I say "run-down," I do not exaggerate. One time while teaching, much to the teens' delight, a large slab of plaster in the ceiling crashed unexpectedly next to me on my desk. Throughout the winter months we sweated or froze together in the classroom because we depended on a single radiator for our heat.
I remember competing with that radiator as the steam would build up in the morning hours and make bongo-drum-sounds. I had to learn to make my speech pattern jive with the popping sounds from the radiator or else it would drown out my lectures.
Often, I had to figure creative seating patterns so my students would not end up being scalded by sitting too close to the radiator.
When the radiator worked, its heat was intense and affected everyone nearby.
Today, when I turned on my messages, I found a call to be a radiator.
Be a radiator? My sister-in-Christ, who is battling breast cancer, returns after months of chemo and surgery, for intense radiation therapy. Daily she will have the radiation until February. It will last 10 minutes each time.
She asks everyone who can to do her a favor: Become Radiators of God's warmth, love, kindness over the next several weeks as she battles this disease. Pick one day during January and February and do something unexpectedly special for 10 minutes for someone else God puts on your heart.
She will wear a red cape with tales of acts of kindness on it at the hospital each week to show to all who are helping her or going through the same process. These acts will radiate encouragement, God's love, and how we can impact others through our faithfulness.
I hope you will join me in doing this for Jodi. You don't need to know her. You just need to know Jesus and intentionally let Him use you.
If you do, would you share with me, please, what you did or the impact, so I may pass that on to her? Your act will end up as a story on her red cape shared with others at the hospital in St. Louis.
Oh, and as you radiate God's love to others this month, say a prayer for healing for our sisters battling this disease. I'll be joining you.
In His warmth,
Gretchen
Charles Spurgeon called the people of prayer "Boiler Rooms." Not the most popular room in the house, but it's where all the energy pours out !! God's people of Prayer are gathering in the Boiler Rooms for your friend! I'm in!
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