Happy 15th Birthday, sweet Rodney!

You served Sue Thomas well for over a decade and deserve all your favorites on one plate…

I rushed home from work today with a mission, to bake peanut butter oatmeal cookies with shredded carrots and apples surrounded by dollops of whipped cream.

Roddy obediently focused until all the photos were snapped and the candles blown out, then waited for the command, “Okay, you can have it,” before scarfing it all down.

He delicately cleaned up the whipped cream first.. then the cookies. There is an orderliness to his eating habits…always the dignified gentleman!

It was a good celebration… a happy ending to our time here in Ohio. We will be leaving for WaterBrooks Retreat in Vermont in a few days and then getting ready for volunteer day on the 24th of May.

May 24th is also Sue’s birthday. We will need another cake for that. A real cake with Sue’s favorite flavors all on one plate. White cake with fluffy frosting.

I can hear Sue enthusiastically announcing, “It’s my birthday all month!”

So let’s celebrate!

Now in the place where Jesus was crucified,

There was a Garden

and in the Garden

there was a Grave

and then that Grave became A Resurrection Spot.

In the Garden of your Life, there might be such a grave,
a place of sorrow and sadness,
a place of laying down your own hopes and dreams for the last time,
a place of deep burial and of placing a stone.

It may be a stone of remembrance, or it may be a stone to seal the past. But that is not the end! You do not have to stay there shrouded in grief wrapped up in loss.

That dark place can become a place of radiant joy as New Life bursts forth out of the death and the Grave Site becomes a Resurrection Spot in your life!

Resurrection. Old Latin. resurgere.
“To rise again.”

Yes, even though you are bruised and battered, keep your face tipped up to wait for the Dawning Light of your Lord.

He will soon pour upon you
His beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
and a spirit of praise instead of despair.

Keep waiting with expectation for the Spirit to breathe renewed life into your soul until you once again are able to say as in the Psalm,
“I am overwhelmed with joy in the LORD my God! For He has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in His robe of righteousness.”

Out of that death in your life will rise His righteousness, His joy, His peace, like a glorious garden in early spring, with living plants springing up everywhere!

(Reflections from John 19.41 and Isaiah 61)

Deb

We never have to be afraid of questioning God.

He commands us to ask, to seek, to knock.

He IS wisdom and knowledge….therefore He can handle ANY of our questions, no matter how difficult they are.

He is wiser than our questions and smarter than our problems.

He IS the truth….and He is honored when we are truthful with Him about the tough stuff.

When we bring Him our questions, we will discover that He IS the Answer. ~ ds

These photos are: a favorite verse Sue Thomas underlined in her Bible, and a very thoughtful gift that unexpectedly arrived on our doorstep.

From the day I met Sue Thomas, I often heard her thanking God for her “very breath of life.” Often. Sometimes at the supper table.. or in the car as we were on the way to the airport. Or in a moment of praise for something breathtakingly beautiful, like a sunset.

Then came the lung cancer diagnosis. Her body was already exhausted from dealing with the infamous MS Hug (when the muscles between the ribs go into spasms and leave you feeling breathless). And she had questions for God.

It went from frustration,

“All of these years I’ve been appreciative of my very breath of life. Why are You now making breathing difficult?”

To pondering the why,

“How am I supposed to speak and proclaim You if I can’t even get my breath?”

To accepting as part of God’s plan,

“What is your purpose for me in this?”

It’s best to be honest and directly ask God those hard questions when we are faced with struggles and doubts about how He is dealing with us.

And, as George Mueller reminds us, to look to the Lord alone…leaning all of our heaviness of heart and weighty questions on Him alone.

“If we, indeed desire our faith to be strengthened,
We should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried…
And therefore, through the trial, be strengthened.

Even as believers, we have the same shrinking
From standing alone with God
From depending on Him alone
From looking to Him alone.

And yet this is the very place we should be if we wish our faith to be strengthened!”

George Mueller

Sometimes my feet get so stuck in the Stuff of Earth, that I can hardly lift my foot to move forward into the next day.

Do you sometimes feel that way?

But even in the midst of being overwhelmed by Too Much Everything…

by focusing on the future Everything Here resizes into proper proportion and perspective.

AW Tozer says it so well in his book, Of God And Men…

“Even if the earth should continue a million years, not one of us could stay to enjoy it. We do well to think of the long tomorrow. Toward the world to come we are all headed.

How unutterably wonderful that we Christians have One of our own kind to go ahead and prepare a place for us! That place will be in a world divinely ordered, beyond death and parting, where there is nothing that can hurt or make us afraid!”

Eternity is my Lodestar. I will set my sights on Things Above,

And by faith gaze toward that world of Endless Joy,

And Jesus.

ds