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This was a fun weekend!  It was also very full of social events.  I had two wedding showers to attend.  They are always fun.

Saturday was a wedding shower for a young woman from our church.  She has had a difficult year in many ways, but this is a very happy beginning to the new year.  She is marrying in about a month and will be moving a little west of the DFW area.  Many of us from church were at the shower as well as her future mother-in-law.  It was fun to celebrate a new beginning for her even though I don’t know her very well.

Sunday afternoon was a wedding shower for the daughter of a friend I have known for years.  They lived in Tyler before we moved here and we met them not too many years after.  Her husband died very suddenly of a heart attack at age 39 and she was left with four children to raise.  They were aged college to elementary.  She did a wonderful job over the years and is now enjoying her grown children and grandchildren.

Our youngest daughter and her only daughter are only a year apart.  They worked one summer in Montana.  Now Claire has married in December.  Yesterday was a shower with long time family friends for the bride and groom.  We saw friends we haven’t seen in a very long time, many of whom were in church with us at one time.  It was fun to catch up on them and their families.

It is always interesting to intersect the life of others at certain points in time.  If we don’t ask question, we look at them and think, “Wow, her life is so together.  She wouldn’t have any idea what I’m going through right now.”

I’m here to tell you, as one who is ALWAYS asking questions…to the point of it being a flaw at times,

you have no idea what has happened in a person’s life before you met them.

Asking questions, the open-ended kind where they are free to answer as little or as much as they want, will give them an opportunity for them to tell you parts of their story.  There will be days when you will sit there hearing it, not believing the person is telling you what they are saying!

What you do with that story is what guides whether it will happen again.

  • If you treat it as a piece of fine china that is precious and fragile, not to be shared with others.
  • If you treat it as something that was a gift, only for you.  You will find more and more that others will open up their lives to you.

It is an amazing treat, not only to hear about GOD’s grace that has played out in the lives of others…for me, I hear of it mostly from women.  But that often overlaps as I hear about its effect on their marriages too!  It strengthens my faith.  It encourages my faith as I watch GOD work as he did in my friend and her daughter Claire to bring her to the point where she is married to a christian husband and is joyful, relaxed and happy…and active in her local church.

The takeaway from today?

Do you believe that God is strong and powerful enough to intervene in the difficult circumstances that describe your present?

Can you trust Him to guide you into your future and bring about the change that is needed to get you  there…even if the most important change needed is perseverance?

 

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side; Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;

Leave to your GOD to order and provide; In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: your best, your heav’nly Friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

 

Be still, my soul: your GOD will undertake to guide the future as He has the past.

Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still my soul: the wave and winds still know His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

 

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart and all is darkened in the vale of tears,

Then shall you better know His love, His heart, who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears.

Be still, my soul: your Jesus can repay from His own fullness all He takes away.

 

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on when we shall be forever with the Lord,

When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past, all safe and blessed we shall  meet at last.

 

hymn by Katherina von Schlegel 1752/translated by Jane Borthwick 1855

tune: Finlandia