I’ve been told I’m a pretty independent person. I hate to ask for help, yet there have been times in my life when I’ve been so grateful that others saw my need and gathered around, willing to do what they could.
Many years ago when I was expecting our third child, neither set of grandparents was free to come and help out with the rest of the family. I will never forget the amazing way all our friends in the Body of Christ rallied round, providing meals, ferrying our two older children to and from school and kindergarten, minding them until my husband was free to take them home. Truly they were ‘God with skin on’ for us at that time.
Years later, I ended up in hospital for an unexpected operation, just prior to my husband’s sixtieth birthday party. Invitations had already been sent out – what should I do? I arrived home from hospital on the day of the party to find my friends from our church had everything in hand. They rearranged our house and set out all the food, while I sat and watched. Again, my friends showed me exactly what God is like. Again, they were ‘God with skin on’.
Over the years too, God has provided people who strongly believed in me, who cheered me on when I studied for my Bachelor of Theology in my late forties and when I later went on to write my novels. One such special mentor or ‘spiritual companion’, as she prefers to term it, rescued me so often from my confusion and discouragement that I call her my ‘lifesaver’ and dedicated my first novel ‘Heléna’ to her. She was, and still is, ‘God with skin on’ for me.
We all need such people – even the strongest and most independent among us. Recently I noticed in the bible how even the great apostle Paul admitted to that. In one breath, in Philippians 4:13, he maintains the following:
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Yet in the very next breath, he tells his Philippian friends and supporters how good it was of them to share in his ‘troubles’ and reminds them how they sent him aid ‘again and again when I was in need (v 16).’
So whoever you are, may you find ‘God with skin on’ beside you too, when you need help. Yes, God is always there anyway and will never leave us, but it helps so much to see God’s love ‘fleshed out’ before our eyes too, don’t you agree?
And perhaps you – or I – need to be ‘God with skin on’ for someone even today. What do you think?
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 