Vicky Victorious

I sent Vicky the pictures I took at the wedding of a mutual friend. When she replied to thank me I asked her how she was doing. It had been a long time since we'd "conversed." We used to live within shouting distance of each other in Caracas. She now lives in Mumbai and I am back in Canada. She left Caracas as a child about to burst into her teen years. Now she is a mature young woman about to finish off a post-graduate degree. When she emailed me back to bring me up-to-date with her life, I was reminded once more of God's faithfulness. Vicky is a trophy of God's grace and how she has gone on with the Lord through some difficult times is an encouragement to the fainthearted.

In her email, Vicky was lamenting her failure to accomplish something that was at the top of her priority list when she left Spain to go to India. She desperately wanted to be a witness for Jesus. And while she's had many opportunities to do that, she feels badly about the times when she didn't have the adequate answers to theological questions flung her way by those she was trying to influence for God. She felt badly that she had had to run to others for a shoulder to cry on when she felt she had failed, or to get the answers to the questions that she couldn't handle.

Through the experience, Vicky discovered some of the realities of being a Christian, realities that have driven her to spending a lot more time leaning on the Lord in dependence rather than leaning on her usual independent self. 

That's a good lesson and will stand her in good stead for the rest of her life.

I was reminded of Vicky's victory when a read a couple of little phrases from my devotional reading this morning. The Lord tells Hosea: "I will answer him and care for him, I am like a green pine tree' your fruitfulness comes from me" —Hosea 14:8, NIV. This is similar to Jesus' last reminder to his disciples before he went to the cross when he said: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit' apart from me you can do nothing" —John 15:5, NIV.

Our weaknesses and frailties in our Christian lives are not meant to excuse us from striving for improvement; they are meant to remind us that he is the One working in us and through us, and that without Him we really can't accomplish anything of eternal value.

Vicky is, and will continue to be, victorious because she is learning that lesson, and learning it well. I hate to tell her that it might be something she will spend the rest of her life learning—but then again, she might not be as slow a learner as I am!