At home everywhere in God’s Church
BY Leslie Wilson
It amazes me how a child of God can travel anywhere and fully expect to find kin in Christ there. The last few weeks I’ve been enjoying my first trip to Nova Scotia, where my husband, Bob, and I plan to retire. Over the Internet, Bob discovered a church in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which seemed to be especially filled with the power of God at work. This New Year’s weekend, I was delighted to be a part of the worship service at Cape Breton Christian Fellowship Church.
The testimony of one mother in particular moved me. She stood before the large congregation in the borrowed school auditorium thanking God for bringing her husband to Christ recently. Then she shared a deeply moving hymn, while her husband, Paul, accompanied on the guitar. I approached her when the service ended. After introducing myself and sharing a copy of Living Stones News with her, I asked if she would be willing to share her testimony with others in Christ back here in America. At that point, I did not realize the full depth of the testimony she would later share.
I stopped her when the story touched on great tragedy. I told her she needn’t fill in all the painful details. Still, she gladly related the full story. "I feel God allows such tough times so we can relate better to others in their difficult times," she said. Obviously, she had shared her testimony so many times that the pain of the telling had been replaced with the joy of God’s healing.
On a Bible search Web site on my laptop, we looked up the scripture of Romans 8:38-39 which helped keep Melanie going through this dark period: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
God’s love shined through the testimony of this woman I had grown so close to in less than 24 hours. There are times when God's world seems so small and closely knit. Times when we realize that all who love Him are our brothers and sisters. Times when we realize He works in their lives just as He works in our own.
(Read Melanie’s story. Click here)
