Our friends we stayed with last week while our boys were at state have two sons in high school. The oldest was going to be there when we arrived but his plans changed to be with a friend. His friends dad got very sick on Tuesday of that week. He got some kind of infection of strep and pneumonia or something along those lines. Apparently the spleen fights that infection and he had his removed as a child. He died on Friday. Can you imagine? This poor family the week before was probably busy with holiday plans and suddenly life just stops.
Another friend of mine just suddenly lost her father-in-law. No warning. Now a family plans a funeral instead of Christmas dinner this week.
This morning I was planning on posting on other things until I got an email from church. We do basketball at our church a little girl named Kendall went in to get her appendix out and came out with the knowledge she has Leukemia.
My heart just breaks for these families. I know things like this happen all the time. I remember losing a loved one and driving to the funeral and seeing smiling faces in cars and just wanting to scream, "Don't you know what's happening today!!! This is a bad day! You don't even know what we're going through today!". And I can imagine in the midst of Christmas it's a million times harder. I don't question where God is during all of this. I think the fact we see the difference in joy and sorrow, laughter and pain shows there is good and bad in this world. God is good, all the time. I've heard someone say if you could see what God sees in the midst of your pain and tragedy, you would choose 100% to be where you are. I know from experience that is very hard to remember when you're neck deep.
Please pray for these families and others you may know that they may be so fully covered in prayer and peace that they joyfully run to the Savior's arms. Pray that their hearts are not hardened by the pain and the words they speak bring glory to God. I listened to a speaker talk on heartbreak and pain and he shared that when you are going through times like this you have a megaphone to your mouth. Everything you say to others is magnified. Think of the difference of some guy sharing about forgiveness and saying you should forgive others and then change that picture to that of a tearful mother showing a picture of her young child who was killed by a drunk driver. She shares her pain and her sorrow but then she brings out the man who killed her child and hugs him and introduces him as a friend. She shares her struggle to forgive and their vision to now encourage others to forgive as well. Whole different picture huh.
I pray for their comfort. I pray they can still have times of joy and peace this season. I pray that if YOU are going through times like these you know others are praying for you and wanting to help. Mostly, I pray that if these families don't know Christ someone near them does and has the opportunity to share with them the greatest gift of all.
For unto us a child is born! Unto us a son is given!!
1 comment:
Yes.... Praying. : (
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