Encourage one another daily

I am in a lot of pain right now. I had all-morning surgery to remove skin cancer from the top left side of my forehead and the top right side of my forehead. As soon as I got home I opened the computer and went to Ann Voskamp's A Holy Experience blog. As usual, she had the medicine I needed. She linked today to a post by Joni Eareckson Tada.

Joni is quadriplegic. One day she just sat in her wheelchair looking out her front door, not knowing if she could face another day. Her husband came to her with a sharpie pen and a yellow post-it note, on which he wrote the letter "C."

“It stands for Courage,” he said, “The courage of Christ. I can see it in your eyes, Joni, and you can do this. I know you can!”

With that he pressed the post-it note just above her heart. She writes,

Those words were brimming with power and life. His was a pronouncement, a declaration of the good he saw in me… or, at least the good he wanted to see. And God gave me His amazing grace to rise to the occasion.

It’s a hard world. Even the best of Christians are feeling the weight of weariness. Little wonder we are to “Encourage one another daily” (Hebrews 3:13).

Think of the people you’ll see today… friends recovering from surgery, neighbors dealing with grief, coworkers coping with pain.

Whether you say it in an email, over the phone, or in person, your words have the capacity to change their countenance and character.

Ann provided just the blog post I needed to deal with today's pain.