In all the years of visiting people in hospitals and nursing homes as a pastor, I\u2019ve never had a total stranger repeatedly bop me in the face with a balloon and ask me: \u201cAre you mad yet? Why aren\u2019t you mad? Are you mad now? Why aren\u2019t you mad?\u201d<\/p>\n
I had been in the hallway of a nursing home talking, laughing and exchanging truths about God with a 100-year-old Christ follower (and grandmother of a friend), when the \u201cballoon lady\u201d (with severe dementia) rolled over in her wheelchair and began bopping me in the face with a little red balloon and asking me, \u201cAre you mad yet?\u201d<\/p>\n
When I would say, \u201cNo ma\u2019am\u201d (as I held my arm out so she wouldn\u2019t hit Mrs. Ruth), the lady would persist and ask again, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you mad?\u201d<\/p>\n
It took a couple of minutes for some of the workers to notice what was happening. As they wheeled the lady with the balloon to another part of the room, they apologized to me several times, while lovingly and patiently explaining to the resident that \u201cthe nice young man might not want to be bopped in the face with a balloon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought it was awesome Mrs. Ruth, this sweet 100-year-old Christian woman, didn\u2019t skip a beat while all of this was going on. She just kept on talking about how good God is and what a joy it has been to serve Him.<\/p>\n
This episode made me think about how easy and quite common it is for Christ followers to get distracted by the \u201cballoon boppers\u201d of the world. Many times we can get so bothered by crazy events happening around us in our wayward culture that we forget our primary purpose as believers: to glorify the Lord by making more disciples (Matthew 28:19-20; John 15:8).<\/p>\n
A 100-year-old lady reminded me (without even knowing it) that I need to keep my focus on Jesus Christ, faithfully shine His light and keep making disciples no matter what distractions the world may \u201cbop\u201d me with.<\/p>\n
Thank you, Mrs. Ruth, for this important reminder.<\/p>\n
As the Scripture states, \u201cYou therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen\u201d (2 Peter 3:17-18).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In all the years of visiting people in hospitals and nursing homes as a pastor, I\u2019ve never had a total stranger repeatedly bop me in the face with a balloon and ask me: \u201cAre you mad yet? Why aren\u2019t you mad? Are you mad now? Why aren\u2019t you mad?\u201d I had been in the hallway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3575,277,5402,5401],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}