grace in time of need

War is never cheap.

The currency in which its cost is paid is human life. Bodies maimed. Minds scarred. Hearts broken. And lives lost.

Young lives, with all still to live for. Young lives, with a future bright with dreams before them.

Young lives cut short in a single moment of time.

We know in our heads the cruel facts of war. The statistics are often paraded before our watching eyes on the TV screen. But that's all they often are. Just another set of statistics. Numbers, more than names of folk we know.

We're anaesthetised against the dreadful cost of war by distancing ourselves from all the pain and anguish that's involved.

Until that pain comes knocking at our door. Until it all gets personal and close. Until it's folk we know, our family or friends.

We've folk in the congregation here who know that knock may come at any time. Folk for whom it's day by day so personal and close.

Folk who have family serving in the forces.

The son of a niece of one of our elderly members was serving in Afghanistan. A fine young man, marked by both courage and care.

The bulk of his body was blown to bits on Sunday morning as he took the full force of another of those explosions in that troubled, war-torn land.

When this elderly lady appeared at our worship yesterday morning, all she knew was that his life was hanging in the balance. He still had his sight and his hearing, but not a lot else. He was on an iron lung.

The distress which she knew is hard to express in words. She's a lovely, gracious lady with the servant heart of Christ. But that heart was plainly breaking.

She sat at the back through the service. Just after I'd preached, another younger lady came in - very late - to the service, and sat at the back. She knows the older lady, but knew nothing of the news she'd had this morning in relation to her niece's son.

But prompted, I can only think, by the Spirit of the Lord, this younger lady took the older lady by the hand - wondering even as she did so why on earth she'd thought to do so at that time. She simply felt burdened to lay her hand upon the older woman's hand and clasp her hand thus firmly.

And then I prayed. And prayed for this dear lady in the anguish she was knowing; and lifted to the Lord her niece's son.

He died on Sunday morning. Perhaps, for all I know, at that particular moment as we prayed.

But in his own kind providence the Lord had brought a lovely friend to sit beside this woman at that moment of great grief. And the hand of this friend on the older lady's hand was surely no less than a tangible token of God's own hand being gently laid upon her life at that distressing time.

We don't always know what it is that's going on in the lives of those around us. And because that's so, the things which we say and do in response to the Spirit's leading are all the more clearly the hand of the Lord himself upon the lives of those other folk.

It's a humbling privilege to be in these ways an instrument of grace. For that is what it was on Sunday morning.

A woman in distress. And comfort being afforded in the knowledge of God's kind and gracious hand upon her life.

War is never cheap. That's a stark reality we know too well.

But grace is always there for us in time of need.