Sunday my wife Teresa got so sick she could barely hold her head up. She had gone on the Gadsden county prison event with us and had begun to feel a little sick on the way home. By nightfall she was sneezing and wheezing and drinking cough syrup in slugs. I have to undergo surgery tomorrow and I can just see me getting three discs removed and bone marrow implanted, and then coughing and sneezing until my stiches break open and the new metal plate that they implant on my spine blowing off.
Ouch!
So I’ve been avoiding her and so far I haven’t had as much as a sniffle. So late yesterday she came in with a worried look on her face and told me the doctor’s office just called and told her to come in on Monday for additional tests including a sonogram because they detected something troublesome on her mammogram.
Oh boy – That’s all we need.
We look around and see so many evil people prospering and those who are trying to follow God suffering.
What’s up with that?
We are tempted to ask “why”?
I’ve learned not to ask that question, because there simply is no good answer, especially when it comes to children who suffer. The problem is often compounded because when it rains it pours. In other words we don’t just get hit with one calamity, but one right after another and then another.
So often when it happens, we tend to say that life is simply unfair, but the Bible states otherwise. In the Garden of Eden God told Adam: “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you . . . ” He went on to say that they and their descendants would die and return to dust.
The fallen life that we live now, with its sickness, sorrow, sadness, disease, perversion, and death, are consequences of sin that began way back in ancient times and was handed down generation to generation. Just look at how it has intensified with beheadings, rapes, and rampant sin commonplace throughout the world. Before sin came into the world none of it even existed. Our ancestors lived a life of ease in the Garden of Eden and daily walked with God in the cool of the evening.
Our Father sent Jesus into this world in order that those who believe in Him will be able to return to that life of bliss, only this time it will last forever. Until then we must live in this fallen world with these fragile mortal bodies and the pain that goes with living in them.
We have been given choices; we can follow the world or we can maintain our faith in Jesus and receive His grace that was earned at a heavy price including His precious blood being spilled and His body being broken on a cross. The oldest book in the Bible (Job) puts it in perspective for me: “For He wounds, but He also binds up; He injures, but His hands also heal”. That is what Jesus did . . .
God loves us so much that He didn’t abandon us. Halleluiah! The Bible states it and I believe it! I’m praying that Teresa will get over her cold/flu or whatever it is, and I’m praying especially hard that she doesn’t have breast cancer and I hope you will as well. If she does have it, we will earnestly ask God to heal her and allow us to continue to enjoy life together for many more years to come.
Whether we even knew it at the time, or ever acknowledged it or not, our lives have been entrusted to God’s capable hands for our entire lives and on through the next. Our beating heart is held in His capable loving hands and today is no different than yesterday, or tomorrow. One thing is for certain in our family, we love the Lord no matter what might happen to us; we trust in him, and we serve Him as best we know how and will continue to do so until He calls us home.
Psalm 34:18 “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
February 3, 2015 – Click here to listen