Seeing God in all things

It's been another crazy week, people.

We went back to school after spring break, and it seemed like a whole BUNCH of homework assignments jumped on us all at once.  After being home for a week, going back to the routine of being gone for most of the day, every day, has been tiring.

And other things have added to the weight of this week...
remembering one of Joshua's high school classmates who died in a car accident last week
the news of a friend of my parents' who was in a car accident with her daughters and who suffered massive head injuries (please be praying)
...other things.

Sometimes you wonder how much more frustrations, sorrows, and suffering one world can take.

But then I look for God in everything.
God, who has blessed us so much this week through family, friends and strangers
God, who has given us rest, good health, a home, a car, plenty of food, clothes, etc....
God, who welcomed Joshua's friend home to heaven
God, who protected the little girls in the car accident and is now surrounding their mama with His presence
God, who blesses us in ways we often don't expect
God, who is in control of all things

Many of my friends are getting ready to graduate.  Soon it'll be our turn.  Thinking about the end of college gets me wondering sometimes-- will Joshua be able to find a teaching job right away?  Where will we have to move?  How will we make new friends?  What will it be like, being in a totally unfamiliar place?

But then I remember...
God has great plans for us.
God has our future in his hands.
God loves us more than we can imagine (he sent his SON for us!)-- and has blessed us in the past.

So we can trust that he will continue to bless us in the future.

And for that, I am SO thankful.


Linking today with Loved and Lovely, The Fontenot Four, black tag diaries, There's Just One Mommy

My Sickness...HIS Suffering

So I've been down with a rather nasty case of influenza since Monday.  I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Today is my second day home from school, and this is the girl who NEVER skips classes.  Today Hubby isn't feeling well either, so at least I don't have to stay home alone all day!

Since it's Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, I've been pondering the connections my physical illness has to my spiritual one.  This sickness is a result of the fact that spiritually I'm sick with sin.  Before I was baptized and given faith by the Holy Spirit, I was literally DEAD in my sin.  Now sin does not have control over me like it once did--I'm not going to die permanently from its presence in my life--but it still rears its ugly head on a regular basis and causes much frustration, pain, and suffering in my life.

Then it hit me: I don't REALLY suffer all that much for the sins I've committed.  Yes, I have to deal with the consequences.  Sometimes they're very serious ones that affect my life and the lives of those around me.  Sometimes they cause feelings of guilt that I have to deal with until I realize, once again, God's amazing forgiveness.

But here's the thing: compared to how Jesus suffered on the cross, my sufferings are pretty minimal.  First of all, having the flu is nothing compared to being beaten nearly to death, being nailed to a cross, and then hanging there for six hours until He finally died.  The worst of it?  Jesus was literally, completely separated from God.  Because He took the sin of the whole world on Him, God couldn't bear to be in his presence, because of God's complete perfection.

Jesus took the physical sufferings  and the separation from God that I deserve--on HIMSELF.


Yes, I am sick with sin.  But MY sin caused HIM to die.

The incredible thing is, the story doesn't end there.  Yes, He suffered.  Yes, He died.  But Jesus is not only Man--He is GOD.  And as God, He didn't stay dead.  After conquering Satan, sin, and death completely, Jesus rose from the dead.  And He is still alive.  And He has promised that I and everyone who believes in Him will not die forever.  We will not have to endure eternal separation from God--or even get a taste of it like Jesus did.

And the physical suffering that we endure now, in this life?  Those won't last forever.  Compared to what a lot of people experience, this sickness I have is so short, so mild, so temporary.  But even the worst illness will be healed completely in time.  And in heaven, there will be no more sickness, no more pain, no more suffering.  The perfect bodies we will have there will last for eternity, because we will be with God.

All because of what Jesus did for us.

http://www.thesefiveofmineplustwo.net/search/label/A%20Handful%20of%20Heart

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

Ten years ago, it seemed like the world was ending.
For a lot of people, over three thousand, it did.  Their time on this earth ended.
Their families and friends probably felt like the world was ending for them, too.  But they had to live through their pain and grief.  Ten years later, I'm sure they're still living through it.

It's at times like that when the whole world cries out, "WHY?!?"


Why does an all-loving God allow evil things to happen?  If God is supposed to be good, where was he when those planes crashed into the World Trade Center?  If those things happened, does he even exist at all?

I'm one of those people who firmly believes in the existence of an all-loving, all-good God.  Sometimes I wonder, too, why he lets things happen.

Why he lets young fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, die, before it seems they've lived their lives fully.  Why so many babies get aborted, gypped out of a life they should have lived.  Why wars happen.  Why diseases take the lives of hundreds, thousands.  Why tyrants control innocent people.  Why people starve and go without clothes or homes or money.

I even wonder why he lets annoying little things happen to me.  Why do I get sick?  Why do I sometimes not have money for the things I want and think I need?  Why do things go wrong?

Enough questions.  I have an answer:

I don't know.


I don't always know why bad things happen.  I do know what causes them: SIN.  God has reasons for allowing them that my human reason cannot understand.  When I don't know why, I DO know that God DOES.  He is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful.  Nothing happens to me or anyone else without God knowing about it.

I can't understand why sometimes, but what I do understand is that God loves me more than I can imagine.  I know that I have a finite mind, that I can't see or understand the future.  I know that he's God, and I'm not, and I'm happy and content with that.

God has my life in his hands.  He has your life in his hands.  He does, in fact, have the whole world in his hands.  And considering how big, gentle, loving, and caring God is...I can't think of any place for my life to be.  No matter what happens.  And when this world ends for good, I know where I'll be...in God's arms.

A Political Victory, or a Spiritual Tragedy?

A friend posted on facebook last night, "Who needs the news when I have facebook?"  Around 9:30 and 10:00 every other post was announcing Osama bin Laden's death.  My initial reaction was one of relief--finally, the ring leader of Al Quaeda is dead.  And then, to my shame, I thought, I wonder how Satan felt about this.  It's a victory for our side, right?  One of Satan's most powerful tools is gone, after all.

My wonderful and wise fiance reminded me, when I voiced this thought, that Satan probably laughed: he had claimed another man for his own.  God would not want me to consider this a victory.  He weeps whenever one of his created people is lost to Satan.  It hit me:

Jesus died for Osama bin Laden for the same reason He died for me.  Paul wrote in his first epistle to Timothy that God "wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4).  John wrote in his Gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).  The Gospel is for ALL people.  Jesus died to save the world.  That includes bin Laden just as surely as it includes me.

Some are calling bin Laden the "Hitler of our generation."  That he may be.  He certainly is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.  It was the attack on our country that he orchestrated that caused the war that has lasted for the last decade.  This man was responsible for much grief, pain and death.

But Jesus took all bin Laden's sins on himself, just as he took my sins on himself.  "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," Paul writes in Romans 3, "and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."  The death of Osama bin Laden is a tragedy, because he rejected the saving grace of Jesus Christ and will now spend eternity separated from God.  Who could rejoice at such a thing?

I rejoiced yesterday, watching over 20 confirmands profess their faith in Jesus Christ.  Two of them, adults, had been born and raised Buddhist, and have recently come to faith in Jesus.  That was cause to rejoice: two more people are members of the Body of Christ and will spend eternity in heaven with him.

I don't want to sound legalistic or holier-than-thou.  I admitted that at first I felt relief knowing bin Laden was dead.  But I feel greater relief at knowing that in Jesus, I am alive, by the grace of God.