My mouth dropped wide open when my friend, a very attractive lady, showed me that picture I shall never forget: “You didn’t!” I yelped. “Yep, I did!” she stated matter of factly. I was looking at her, a motley looking bag lady with a blackened tooth and the widest grin possible on her face and was amazed that she actually boarded the plane looking like THAT! “No!” It wasn’t Halloween. Cheri was going to visit her brother, a very successful CEO of a large business, and was getting back at him for all the pranks he played on her. She hooted and laughed mischievously when she told me how confounded, bewitched and embarrassed he looked when he saw her waving her hands frantically in the middle of the airport and screeching at the top of her lungs: “HERE I am David! It’s ME: your sister!”

God knows I miss this woman and yes, David, does too. Cheri was fun, spirited, loving, and one of the most giving, selfless people I’ve ever known. For almost forty years she was “there” for me like all of Snow White’s seven dwarfs rolled into one. When I fractured my hip, she immediately drove several hours from her home to come stay with me by my bedside at the nursing home I was in which was also far from my home town.

My daughter-in-law held a position as Director of Finances over a network of nursing homes, and consequently through her, I was given a large private room that had a little bistro directly across from it. That facility, less than a year old, was beautiful and luxurious and it was almost like I was on vacation, except for the pain. Can you believe it? … Yes, you can, because you know God. An extra bed was placed in my room for Cheri and she stayed with me for a week free of charge. Oh yes, God gives favor and more favor to His children and giving me Cheri as a friend was one of the biggest ones ever. She spent that week not only helping me, but could be seen pushing I don’t know how many people in their wheelchairs and was a help in whatever way possible,… plus great fun. I have no doubt she’s very busy in Heaven now doing more than playing a harp. I often imagine her flying on a cloud, not as a bag lady, but the best of the best of “Godmothers” waving at me, saying: “Michele, it’s ME!”

I’m sure she has her eye not only on me, but on all those she faithfully served over the years, especially the ones she met when she did work as a volunteer in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Besides that, Cheri faithfully made home cooked food for an old homeless man that she brought to him every day for years. Let me tell you: That woman could cook and I’m sure Willie never had it so good.

As those of you who read my posts know, I rarely write about literal things without revealing what they represent type and shadow wise, so I shall be sharing with you now what it means to be spiritually homeless. In the middle of the night last evening, the face of someone I knew suddenly appeared to me and the words: “street person” came with the vision. I believe I was being shown that this one who brought much harm to me, is presently in a spiritual condition likened to a homeless person’s and that I’m to continue to pray for her.

The main reason why people lose their homes and then not be able to get another roof over their heads is because they don’t have the money or the means to do so. We, who know the Lord, have a home in the Spirit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, but if we don’t abide in Him by receiving, loving and remaining in the truth, we will find ourselves not functioning in the mind of Christ, but in the carnal mind which will take us on paths that don’t lead to life. Truly we will be like street people wandering and without comfort with no covering over our heads. I wonder how many Christians realize that every time the truth is rejected by them, they are closer to becoming spiritually homeless. The big kicker comes when people judge, condemn and call the bearer of the truth “evil.” Truly, no one can touch God’s anointed and do His prophets harm without finding themselves without joy, kicked out of their peaceful abiding place in Christ until they repent. I don’t know of anything that has more serious consequences than harming one of God’s children.

It’s not by chance that just now my eyes were drawn away to see several doves eating bird seeds on the pavement in front of my pane glass doors. I believe it’s a visual message that ties in to this one relaying that we’re to be harmless as doves and to readily eat God’s word. Not all seeds are sown on good ground and the Bible plainly states that there will be those who will reject the seeds we sow. They will cast us out as evil and malign our names just as was done to our Lord, but we’re still to keep on sowing.

It’s in the bag, my brethren, that great shall be our reward… even in a blessed bag like Cheri’s!