Bad News, Real Hope

Bad news came yesterday. It is not life threatening but some of our fear have fallen on us. It was an unexpected diagnosis at our church's free clinic.  (That God has given our church a free clinic to care for the needs of our community and then in turn it cared for us is part of the beauty of the work we are in.) This mix of bad then good is one of the ways we see the glory of God in the world. We are called to lose our life for Christ and in doing so we gain real life, abundant life.  We see the pattern of bad then good often, but that does not mean that we don't struggle. There is often so much bad new in the city that we can feel overwhelmed.  We make jokes to help us in the trouble.  For this bad news we immediately tried to categorize what stage of grief we were in. I thought that we had skipped over denial (what do doctors know anyway?), anger (how can God do this to us?), bargaining (if you fix this Lord then…), and headed straight to depression, on our way to acceptance. At least that seem to be what the two boxes of Little Debbie's snack cakes said to me. I got the strawberry rollup kind for me, and the nutty bars for Debbie. We have never been good at bargaining any way. We want our comfort to be in God alone. But we struggle. "I'll have another snack cake. Thank you."

God, our Father has good in store for us. We have little doubt. We point out these verses to others, God, and ourselves. "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose." We then pair that with the fact that "Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." We expect to live this abundant life. It is a condition where we know we will live in the heights of joy and occasionally the depths of sadness, but whatever the feeling we know the presence of God. "We rejoice with those who rejoice. We weep with those who weep." Now, others will do some of the same things with us. They may share in our snack cakes, but what ever we all do, we will look to God to help.

We will call the elders to pray and anoint with oil. We have seen the Lord heal both quickly and slowly. We will expect that the prayer will accomplish much. We will check things out with other doctors. But like other trouble, we will look to the Lord to go through this with us. We will then comfort others with the comfort we have received. Praise the Lord. 

Job 3:25, Luke 9:24,Romans 8:28, 12:15, Isaiah 53:3, 
James 5, II Corinthians 1:4