You know how Papa is so faithful to speak His word to my heart every day? Well, today is no different and I have been eager to share what He said to me! For the past hour or so I have been attempting to sit down to compose this post, but one call after another has interrupted.
The last call has left me grieved in heart and spirit.
My precious niece is dying and is facing this fact alone.
Completely alone.
At least from her perspective.
She isn't really alone because God is there. He is there with His arms out, ready to embrace her at the first utterance.
The family is in denial. Thus they cannot be there for her.
Her doctors want the husband to sign an order that moves her to hospice. He refuses because her mother wants to see the treatment continued and she will hate him if he signs it.
Both he, Tim, and my sister, Chris, vow to kill themselves if they lose her. I believe this is a very real possiblility.
Another sister is so angry at God and cannot imagine what He thinks He is doing. She refused my urging to remind Sara that she should look to the LORD and climb up into His lap.
All of these reactions are very human responses to such a tragedy. They in themselves are tragedies.
This life is simply the place where we prepare for the real thing. Here we have the opportunity to get to know the Living God and get ready for an eternity with Him.
If this life is all there is, let's hang it up now!! It is too hard, too scary, too painful at times to be worthwhile, if this is all we get.
Though my heart is so heavy with grief and so broken over all the sorrow; sorrow that seems to just keep being heaped on one layer after another, there is peace and confidence. Peace and confidence in the only One who is trustworthy; the One who is my peace and confidence.
My heart longs for all my precious ones to find their way to this One.
He is my hope and my future.
The word He gave me was in John chapter fifteen, the second verse. "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit."
The pruning has a purpose - a good purpose. He says that He knows the plans He has for me, for welfare and not for calamity. They are to give me a future and a hope.
I have Him, so I have my future and my hope.
These plans are not for me alone. They are available to all who come.
Oh Papa, how lovely You are!! How I pray that all find You irresistable!!