{"id":5503,"date":"2026-06-12T08:49:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5503"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:49:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:49:36","slug":"how-god-treats-his-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/how-god-treats-his-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"How God Treats His Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

When people fall in love with God for the first time, they often feel a new and intense\u00a0desire:

Lord, use me to do great things!<\/em>

God will definitely\u00a0answer that cry of the heart.\u00a0What’s not always apparent, however, is what it costs<\/em> to be used by God to do great things.

When Craig Barnes was pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., he found himself remembering an experience from his own childhood in Mrs. Williams’ Sunday School class.

Bible stories were told \u2013 acted out, actually \u2013 by figures on a colorful flannel graph board.\u00a0As soon as a new character came into the story, its paper figure was added to the landscape.

“With her long, bony fingers,” Barnes remembers, “she would press that character onto the board until it stuck.”

But Mrs. Williams often had trouble with the flannel graph figure of the apostle Paul.

“He had been used a lot in the stories, and he did not smooth out so well.\u00a0Long ago someone had spilled Kool-Aid on him, which discolored his robe.\u00a0Two of us once got into a fight over who would hand the apostle to her, which resulted in tearing his head off.\u00a0The tape that then held him together made it even more difficult for Paul to stay in place.”\u00a0

In other words, if you show up in a lot of the stories, you’re going to take some hits.

Barnes concluded that God is not easy on the people he uses.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

“The best among us are taped together with prayers and still need a lot of smoothing out.”

There’s an old story, quite possibly true, that the medieval St. Teresa of Avila was once thrown from a cart in which she was riding.\u00a0She wound up in a muddy brook.\u00a0She looked toward heaven and exclaimed, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”\u00a0\u00a0

If you have ever learned a Bible story from a flannel graph board, you know the truth:\u00a0The people who get used the most look the worst.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

They also experience the kind of joy that only saints can know.\u00a0\u00a0

Scotch tape and all.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here When people fall in love with God for the first time, they often feel a new and intense\u00a0desire: Lord, use me to do great things! God will definitely\u00a0answer that cry of the heart.\u00a0What’s not always apparent, however, is what it costs to be used by God to do great things. When… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5505,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503\/revisions\/5505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}