Somebody wrote me that what is happening with my parents and their health, "isn't fair...you're all believers after all."
While I was touched by their caring, what is happening has nothing to do with being fair...or not.
It is simply life.
Death comes to us all. As does illness, and suffering, trials and storms. It is the nature of life; we live in a broken, fallen world, with broken fallen people. Some things happen just because (people get sick...be it a genetic issue, environmental issue, or a simple virus that is picked up that almost kills them....had that happen to me as a child with a double staph infection).....and some storms and hardships come because as broken people, we're hard on each other, and we hurt each other. Sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose.
But it is all simply part of life.
Cancer can strike the nice...and the cruel. Strokes can hit the kind woman who runs the clothing and food pantry at church....or the career focused business person. Such things come to the believer, and non believer alike.
The difference is that those who have faith, have God to comfort and uphold them. They have the promises that there is more than this broken world, and that one day all things shall be set right. And we know that we do not go through our suffering alone, Jesus is with us, bearing the greater burden of it all.
I don't worship God because I expect Him to solve all of life's issues with miracles, or to make my life easy just because I believe. He's not my servant, I'm His. He does, at times, give miracles, I've seen them, I've had them....and sometimes He says "no" to a fervent prayer...because He is looking at the eternal scope of things, not the immediate.
And that is when we simply trust God's will....because we don't know all things, nor see them in the proper perspective.
My perspective right now is laced with grief and gratitude as I wait upon the Lord.
Yet one thing I know...most especially now:
I am blessed.
I was raised by two wonderful parents; I'm their only child together and the child of their older years. I have been beloved and cherished and doted upon all my life. They have always been two of my best friends. They taught me my faith, my love of books, music and ideas, the enjoyment of nature and of cooking, to love and treasure animals, and the fun of a good baseball game. They taught me what loyalty and friendship meant by how they interacted with other people, and how to be gentle with the vulnerable, young and elderly. They taught me that with even limited finances, you can be a blessing to the needy...that faith involves more than just words, but rather it is love in action. They taught me that friendship has no color or cultural barriers, and that people are to be measured by the content of their hearts.
I am blessed.
Even as Mom goes further and further into the waiting hands of God, I am blessed.
Even as my Dad, who just had a pacemaker operation and who has non-treatable cancer, is in the hospital, and we are awaiting news, I am blessed.
And my parents are blessed, because God knows them and has inscribed their names upon His palms and has secured them through the great love and sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
When God does call them home at whatever times He has ordained, to the King's Country across that far, shining river, my consolation shall be this; that I was blessed to have them, to be raised by them and loved by them...and that I shall see them once again.
And that is a promise, an assurance, I can cling to.
In my prayers these last days, talking with God over my fears and my pain and how hard it is to be on the brink of losing parent, a thought occurred to me:
That in even this, Jesus knows my suffering, for He went through it as well.
He lost Joseph, after all.
The man deemed worthy by God the Father to raise His Son Jesus. Joseph, who we must imagine, taught Jesus so much...and who loved Him and watched over Him. We don't know how or when Joseph died...but I can only believe that it must have been a great sorrow for Jesus. Remember, Jesus wept over Lazarus, even knowing He was going to raise him....how much more He must have wept over the loss of his adopted father. And how He must have sought to comfort Mary, who had lost a beloved husband. That home echoed with grief, even as ours has.
It eased my soul a bit to know that even in this, I am not walking a road that my Lord didn't trod before me. He has been through this, and thus, will lead me through it as well; gently and tenderly, safe to the other side.
And it is with the trust in my Shepherd, that even in the stormy valleys of life I say, Blessed be the name of the Lord, my rock and my salvation.
-Beth Haynes Butler
While I was touched by their caring, what is happening has nothing to do with being fair...or not.
It is simply life.
Death comes to us all. As does illness, and suffering, trials and storms. It is the nature of life; we live in a broken, fallen world, with broken fallen people. Some things happen just because (people get sick...be it a genetic issue, environmental issue, or a simple virus that is picked up that almost kills them....had that happen to me as a child with a double staph infection).....and some storms and hardships come because as broken people, we're hard on each other, and we hurt each other. Sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose.
But it is all simply part of life.
Cancer can strike the nice...and the cruel. Strokes can hit the kind woman who runs the clothing and food pantry at church....or the career focused business person. Such things come to the believer, and non believer alike.
The difference is that those who have faith, have God to comfort and uphold them. They have the promises that there is more than this broken world, and that one day all things shall be set right. And we know that we do not go through our suffering alone, Jesus is with us, bearing the greater burden of it all.
I don't worship God because I expect Him to solve all of life's issues with miracles, or to make my life easy just because I believe. He's not my servant, I'm His. He does, at times, give miracles, I've seen them, I've had them....and sometimes He says "no" to a fervent prayer...because He is looking at the eternal scope of things, not the immediate.
And that is when we simply trust God's will....because we don't know all things, nor see them in the proper perspective.
My perspective right now is laced with grief and gratitude as I wait upon the Lord.
Yet one thing I know...most especially now:
I am blessed.
I was raised by two wonderful parents; I'm their only child together and the child of their older years. I have been beloved and cherished and doted upon all my life. They have always been two of my best friends. They taught me my faith, my love of books, music and ideas, the enjoyment of nature and of cooking, to love and treasure animals, and the fun of a good baseball game. They taught me what loyalty and friendship meant by how they interacted with other people, and how to be gentle with the vulnerable, young and elderly. They taught me that with even limited finances, you can be a blessing to the needy...that faith involves more than just words, but rather it is love in action. They taught me that friendship has no color or cultural barriers, and that people are to be measured by the content of their hearts.
I am blessed.
Even as Mom goes further and further into the waiting hands of God, I am blessed.
Even as my Dad, who just had a pacemaker operation and who has non-treatable cancer, is in the hospital, and we are awaiting news, I am blessed.
And my parents are blessed, because God knows them and has inscribed their names upon His palms and has secured them through the great love and sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
When God does call them home at whatever times He has ordained, to the King's Country across that far, shining river, my consolation shall be this; that I was blessed to have them, to be raised by them and loved by them...and that I shall see them once again.
And that is a promise, an assurance, I can cling to.
In my prayers these last days, talking with God over my fears and my pain and how hard it is to be on the brink of losing parent, a thought occurred to me:
That in even this, Jesus knows my suffering, for He went through it as well.
He lost Joseph, after all.
The man deemed worthy by God the Father to raise His Son Jesus. Joseph, who we must imagine, taught Jesus so much...and who loved Him and watched over Him. We don't know how or when Joseph died...but I can only believe that it must have been a great sorrow for Jesus. Remember, Jesus wept over Lazarus, even knowing He was going to raise him....how much more He must have wept over the loss of his adopted father. And how He must have sought to comfort Mary, who had lost a beloved husband. That home echoed with grief, even as ours has.
It eased my soul a bit to know that even in this, I am not walking a road that my Lord didn't trod before me. He has been through this, and thus, will lead me through it as well; gently and tenderly, safe to the other side.
And it is with the trust in my Shepherd, that even in the stormy valleys of life I say, Blessed be the name of the Lord, my rock and my salvation.
-Beth Haynes Butler
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