Read James 2:20-28

In 1980 I spent 2 weeks in the hospital in Akron, recovering from back surgery. That experience I would be happy to forget except for my encounter with a petite lady named Marge in the bed beside me. Marge had been bedridden for several years with brittle bone disease. She had to be very careful because just a cough or a sneeze could cause her to break a bone! Simply rolling over in bed for her was life threatening.

Needless to say, for Marge to have a good night’s sleep was more of a dream than a reality. Consequently, she would catnap throughout the day and stay awake most of the night.

Marge could have been bitter.

Marge could have thought, “What is the point? “

But she didn’t! She knew the Lord and a disease was not going to stop her from putting her faith into action.

Since she was awake most of the night, she had a CB base setup beside her bed and all night long she would monitor the calls from truck drivers, helping them out with directions, giving them advice, talking to them to keep them company or to keep them from falling asleep at the wheel – sharing her faith in a gentle way to people who might be hurting.  Touching the hearts of these men and women behind the wheel with God’s love was her mission right there from the bed that held her prisoner. Most of the drivers she had never and would never meet in person, but that didn’t matter to Marge.

A couple of months after being released from the hospital, I got to go visit Marge at her home.  Sure enough, there beside her hospital bed in her dining room was the CB monitoring equipment she used to spread God’s love. But also beside her bed was something else that caught my eye and was her inspiration. It was a large framed picture of Jesus. From a distance it looked just like an ordinary picture of Christ.  But when I looked closer, I realized it was really a puzzle that was actually made up of hundreds of faces.  Some were faces of people easily recognized like Martin Luther King Jr and John Kennedy, but many of them were of ordinary people like you and me.  All of those pictures put together made up the larger image of Christ.  The picture fittingly was called “In His Image.”

I will never forget that picture and I will never forget Marge and her dedication to putting her faith into action. When I think of Marge, I see Christ.  When I think of Christ, I see Marge among the other saints in that picture.

We, as believers, make up the image of Christ that He needs the world to see.

Do your actions reflect Him to your friends and coworkers, even strangers?

Will your face be included in the next version of “In His Image?”

Pat Arnold