God looks good on you!
Martha Olawale
"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:26
As I walked into the hospital that afternoon, I didn't know what to expect. My heart was running fast because I was overwhelmed by all the sick people I saw. I didn't want to be there, but I had to be. I was in college, and a few days before, I'd received a message from one of my high school friends that Rashida, a mutual friend, got in an accident and was in the hospital near my college.
That was not my first or last time in a hospital, but this one differed from your regular hospital. It was an orthopedic hospital, and everyone there had a missing part of their body. Walking to Rashida's bedside, I saw my friend smiling and thought I must be missing something. But the smile became broader as I got closer.
Looking at her, I couldn't speak; I just sat beside her bed, crying. She looked at me and said, "I'm okay." Of course, I could not understand that because I could see that one of her legs had been amputated. But there was something she felt that I did not; she was not helpless or disabled as I thought; she was a child of God and was enjoying the warmth of her Father.
This is one story that keeps giving because that encounter affected my faith profoundly. Rashida was a Muslim and had given her life to Christ a few years before we graduated High School. Although I was also a Christian too, what I saw in her that day changed my view about the worth of being a child of God. She was in pain from the amputation, but no one could see it on her face. She looked more radiant than anyone else around her, and her faith was the glow at a dark season of her life.
I was privileged to have seen her embrace Jesus as her Savior around the same time I became a Christian. But the joy my friend exuded radiated in the room; even the nurses tending to her were affected by it. In the face of the "whys," there was joy around her. The nurses said her attitude was exceptional.
One of the many blessings of Christianity is knowing the worth Christ places on us because it helps us trade the cloak of self, shame, anger, and reproach for the garment of the joy of being children of God. God looks good on you, regardless of where you appear with Him or the filth the world throws at you. He adds more to us than all the world's wealth, fame, and pleasures. His glory dissipates all our fears, and His majesty drowns every imperfection that comes with our humanity.
It's been decades since I saw Rashida, and I don't know how life is treating her today or even if she's still here with us, but she left an indelible mark on my heart that day. A mark that ingrained a value on my salvation, worth more than life itself. I've raised my hands to sing "The joy of the Lord is my strength" many times, " but I saw it lived out loud that day.
