A renewal of faith - read with caution

I was on the way home from the hospital today. I don't know what song was playing on the radio and it's not really important. It occurred to me today what revitalized my faith. When my uncle passed away in May, my cousin Nita and my Aunt Bev were amazingly strong through the whole thing. They relied on their faith 110% to get them through the pain. Of course, I thought to myself, "If only I had faith like that." But that's not what started my personal revival. During the eulogy, the preacher said that when Adrian reached the gates of Heaven, God would smile proudly and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

I didn't realize it then, but that's what started working on me. I got to thinking, "What will God have to say to me when I reach the gates of Heaven? Have I done anything for His Kingdom?" Since then, I've realized that if my time had been up instead of Uncle Adrian's, God would not have said those words to me. He may have said, "Thanks for praying in a crunch – you know, in the middle of tests or when you thought the world was coming to an end – but what about all those other times? When did you ever thank Me for a blessing? When did you ever spend time in My Word? When did you ever serve Me?" I could hear Matthew 25:45 ringing in my ears, but I didn't know then that it was Matthew speaking to me. Better yet, it was the Lord.

I know a lot of you who have never known the spiritual side of Sheri are probably thinking, "What on earth happened to our tequila-drinking, uninhibited, fun-loving maniac of a friend?" It's probably scaring the hell out of you to hear (or read) me go on like this. That same old Sheri is still here – she just finally figured out what was missing. She finally woke up and said to herself, "What's the point of all of this?" The answer was simple, and maybe a little scary, but abundantly clear. We were created to worship. We were created only for God Himself. My point on this earth is to love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, and all my strength.

Again – this "psycho Jesus babble" is probably way too much for a lot of you. And that's ok. I just put two and two together this evening and I needed to get that off my chest. So… a tiny bit of the divine plan was suddenly clear to me. In Adrian's death came life – everlasting life for me and for Doug. It's amazing that it takes something so dramatic to wake us up and something so tiny to change our lives.

I'm ready to hear those words one day. It'll be the sweetest atta girl ever spoken and won't it be sweet to smile and say thanks for that? Yeah – Douglas Adams had it all wrong. 42 ain't got nothing on the meaning of this life.