HUSH
I ran across this article today, one that I keep in my archive, one that remains one of my most favourite ones. It marked the time when my more “exciting” journey with the Lord began about four years ago, October 2003. The journey has been getting even more exciting nowadays, with a lot of roller coaster riding here and there. But I will keep pressing on knowing that “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NASB
To God be all the glory, to the God who is good, who is so good to me…
This Week's Theme: Life in Perspective
Thursday, January 4
Key Bible Verse: When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge (Proverbs 14:32).
Bonus Reading: Philippians 1:20-24
My father was a victim of the deadly flu epidemic of 1917. Years later, my mother described his death: 'I was sitting beside the bed. Somehow I knew this was the end, and for the first time I cried in front of you children. God was taking my Charlie after giving us so short a time together. He was leaving me a widow with four children. What was I to do? Then [Charlie] looked at me. He recognized me, and I saw all the tenderness again in his eyes. He sat up and put his arms around me. For a moment I thought he was going to get well. Then he said, "Laura, Laura, don't cry. Hush, God is in it." Then he was gone.'
Papa's dying words made no sense to me, his five-year-old son. God's unpredictability was anything but delightful to me. But now, those words bring enormous comfort to that same boy, over 75 years later. And they helped sustain my mother during 50 lonely years of widowhood. Just before my mother died, her heart failed and she was unable to speak. Yet somehow, she mustered her last bit of strength and gasped one word: "Hush."
—Lawrence Crabb, Sr., in God of My Father
Respond:
Think of a time when life was not only hard, but almost impossible to comprehend? Where did you turn?
Thought to Apply:
Death is not death if it raises us in a moment from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from sinfulness into holiness.
Charles Kingsley (English pastor and novelist, 19th century)
Adapted from God of My Father (Zondervan, 1994).
To God be all the glory, to the God who is good, who is so good to me…
This Week's Theme: Life in Perspective
Thursday, January 4
Key Bible Verse: When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge (Proverbs 14:32).
Bonus Reading: Philippians 1:20-24
My father was a victim of the deadly flu epidemic of 1917. Years later, my mother described his death: 'I was sitting beside the bed. Somehow I knew this was the end, and for the first time I cried in front of you children. God was taking my Charlie after giving us so short a time together. He was leaving me a widow with four children. What was I to do? Then [Charlie] looked at me. He recognized me, and I saw all the tenderness again in his eyes. He sat up and put his arms around me. For a moment I thought he was going to get well. Then he said, "Laura, Laura, don't cry. Hush, God is in it." Then he was gone.'
Papa's dying words made no sense to me, his five-year-old son. God's unpredictability was anything but delightful to me. But now, those words bring enormous comfort to that same boy, over 75 years later. And they helped sustain my mother during 50 lonely years of widowhood. Just before my mother died, her heart failed and she was unable to speak. Yet somehow, she mustered her last bit of strength and gasped one word: "Hush."
—Lawrence Crabb, Sr., in God of My Father
Respond:
Think of a time when life was not only hard, but almost impossible to comprehend? Where did you turn?
Thought to Apply:
Death is not death if it raises us in a moment from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from sinfulness into holiness.
Charles Kingsley (English pastor and novelist, 19th century)
Adapted from God of My Father (Zondervan, 1994).
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