Twice more

Gladys and I went to the city and had the Christmas card designed. It takes us a good amount of time to write.

Minor, our son, took the Christmas photograph and is fixing it so we can print it next week.

After the death of Michelle we experinced the deaths of Misty and Jonathon. Dottie was so strong as she went through the suffering and pain of bearing and then losing three children. She told me that even when it does not look like it God is in control. All I wanted to do was get rid of the pain.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had never had grief, pain and disappointment in our marriage? What Dottie helped me to understand was that God was with us all the time even in those horrible painful moments. Psalms 23:4 says, “I will fear no evil for you are with me”. The more pain she experienced the closer she grew to God.

Why is the presence of God so important? For me it is easier to explain by reminding myself of Joshua. It seems as though Moses’ death could have simply undone everything God had done for all those years. I am sure people paniced as the word spread that Moses was dead. “What can we do? Who will lead us?”

But God entered and said to Joshua “Rise because my servant Moses is dead. It is your turn.” All of the pain experienced by Joshua for the 40 years in the wilderness even though he and Caleb were the only two faithful men was now compounded by Moses’s death.

But God had a mission, a job, a message, a ministry, a purpose for Joshua. Pain produced in Joshua a willingness to follow God and obey His directives. Without the pain Dottie and I would never have received our mission from God.

I am blessed to have married Dottie and blessed to have received Jesus and am so blessed to have walked through the valley of death into the light of the ministry God was preparing all along.