Sophie: A Spiritual Encourager with Skin On

The following devotion is taken from the book Extreme Devotion.  As I read through this devotion tonight, I was reminded of something I often tell people when I am feeling like I need Jesus close to me.  I tell them, "Sometimes God has your face."  If you've ever struggled with doubt or despair, and wandered through a valley of tears, then I think this devotion will touch  your heart.

In 1996, our daughter Sophia had a long seizure causing permanent brain damage. She suffered badly for months, crying incessantly for two or three days at a time and writhing in pain. She did not know us or respond to us.    

One nurse could not understand why we were not angry with God for allowing this to happen. I tried to help her see that we are his servants and cannot deny the tremendous gift that God had given us in his Son.

Four months after her seizure, Sophia died.     “The day she died, I saw a picture from a The Voice of the Martyrs article of a Sudanese sister whose breasts had been cut off sitting next to her infant. Her persecutors tortured her by doing this horrible thing, forcing her to watch her child die of starvation. Thousands of miles away from where she was, I knew her pain, and I wept, thinking, I will not allow myself to wallow in self-pity.    

“That woman and others like her did not have the benefit of medical care, fellowship, and love from brethren that we had. Yet they have endured so much, and I, by the grace of God, can also endure it.     “I need these living epistles of the Lord Jesus Christ to express the reality that Jesus lives and this world is not my home.”