11.15.05

The Gift of Faith

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:51 pm by PatrickMead

by Patrick Mead I served as minister in Morgantown, West Virginia for eight years. They were some of the best people I’ve known in my soon-to-be 49 years on this planet, but one of them stays with me everyday. The lessons she taught me were life changing… and she didn’t know it. Phyllis Johnson lost her husband several decades ago in a coal mining accident. Since that time she has had to subsist on a widow’s pension; tiny by any standard. Her life had enough pain in it that no one would have blamed her if she complained constantly… but she never did. She had the gift of faith in a way that I just don’t see very often. No matter what her week was like, she greeted everyone with a smile and a reminder of the love of God. Her faith wouldn’t stay in, so I had to change the way I preached. No more rhetorical questions such as, “So, is God good?” for she’d say “Yes!” And so on. I truly believe that, if her legs had just fallen off in the parking lot, if you asked Phyllis “How are you doing today?” she would have responded “God’s been very good to me.” And she’d mean it. She went to yard sales and charity shops to buy left over cards which she’d then painstakingly address and send to anyone who needed encouragement or a kind word. She spent her days in doing as much good as her few monthly dollars and advancing years would allow. And, as far as I know, she still does. When I get down, want to whine, or feel doubts nibbling at my heart I remember Phyllis. What would Phyllis do? Ah…. okay. I’ll believe.

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