I have a friend that lost her thirty-six year old daughter to cancer in January. My friend has been reading in Hebrews 12, verses 26 through 28 about things being shaken that can be shaken and things which cannot be shaken shall remain. As we reel from the shock of losing this loved one that we’ve been praying for incessantly for months, and who was proclaimed healed in December of 2011, only to pass away in mid-January, we’ve felt shaken to our very core. This mom holds on to the promise of God that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and God will not let His believers go. Even so, we are hurting.
My faith feels like a wet towel slapping against the inside of a dryer, with the heat blasting, scorching, daring my faith to fluff and spring back and recover. The young lady is not related to me, but I knew her and her children and her siblings and her newlywed husband; and her mom is dear to my heart and it hurts to see her suffer and lose weight and battle some kind of respiratory illness for two months, made worse by stress, I presume.
So I cry out to God and pray for the remaining loved ones and for God’s protection and move along. I mailed out a devotional the other day that I wrote twenty years ago. It’s been sitting in a file cabinet. I’m sending out stuff that’s been sitting, thank You, Jesus. This devotional tells of my preteen’s daughter’s faith in me to buy her a certain Christmas gift that I thoroughly intended not to get her. Writing the article opened my heart to a fuller understanding of faith. God allowed me to see this faith building devo when I needed it these many years later.
We are not the only ones being shaken on this planet earth. God tells us to hold on to the end. Revelation repeats this often, “He who overcomes…” will receive a promise listed in each of the messages to the churches in chapters 2 and 3. Shaking happened 2,000 years ago. It will happen tomorrow. It’s a part of life on earth. We get tossed around.
God does His part, we have to do our part, even when our prayers don’t get the answer we’re looking for. Because God is sovereign, He knows all things, He understands all things, He is loving and kind. We are strangers here and our home is not here. So I’m following God and doing what my heartbroken friend is doing, trusting that God will work all things together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purposes, as stated in Romans 8:28. God gives me free choice. I choose to follow Him and not the enemy of my soul, whose goal is to steal, kill and destroy. Spiritual realities are beyond my full understanding, but what I’ve been able to grasp keeps me holding on to God and intending to overcome to the end. I hope you will join me in this journey called life, following Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Savior offered to everyone in the world. God bless you, fellow sojourners.
