Mountains

A silver headed man walks slowly through the line. Ball cap pulled down low. Feet shuffling across the pavement. His runner gathering his food for the week. He leans down to pick up a dessert...donuts...six pack. He wears fatigue all over his face. His body drags with discouragement. Head down...I know that look. That “I just lost the game for my team” look. That “she found someone else” look.

His runner calls me over. “I want you to meet Larry.”

“Hey, Larry. You been here before?”

“First time.”

“Ok. Good to meet you, Larry. Tell me your story…”

Six grandkids. Four in school, twins not school age yet. The mother, Larry’s step-daughter, just sent to prison. Larry and his wife...raising children...again...at a season where most of us don’t plan to be raising children.

I realize how blessed I am. I drew a longer straw than those six kids. They have mountains to climb. Snow-capped Mountains.

Larry and his wife just got custody this week. He’s already tired. It will be sixteen years before the last two leave his house. Larry may not have even planned to be around Harvest, Alabama sixteen more years. He probably can’t see the light at the end of that tunnel.

It’s these moments that you just don’t know what to say. Larry knows I am going to leave that conversation and drive back to my middle class life with a good paying job and one dependent child. He knows I can’t even relate to what it’s like to come get free food for six step-grandkids who have been thrust into your life at a time when you were preparing to rest. I am so far in the prairie that I can’t even see that mountain. The mountain he has to climb...daily.

I ask Larry, “Do you have enough food?”

He replies, “We will make it enough.”

I love it when people say that. Triple that order. Let us take that burden and “so fulfill the law of Christ.”

I tell Larry, “There is plenty of food for all those kids at the Lord’s table.”

All of a sudden, the Lord gives me a word for Larry. It’s a good thing too...all I had was macaroni and cheese. Macaroni and cheese isn’t fuel for mountain-climbing.

He says, “Tell Larry, ‘You are my act of mercy for those children.” Wow!

I share this message with Larry. “I feel like the Lord wants me to tell you that you are His act of mercy for those children.”

In a moment, Larry begins to stand a little taller. He begins to nod his head and shows a glimmer of a smile. I believe God even gave him a glimpse of the light through those words. It changed his whole deal...in a moment. Larry was on assignment from God. He is those six children’s angel. He is how they will learn the love of the Father. He was called to bring deliverance to those children’s lives. He was sent to help them climb mountains.

And at his greatest moment of weakness, God gave him the message that made him walk in his calling. Larry will be on the other side of this mountain. And so will those six children.

They got a Mountain Mover on their side.