Jesus Christ Blog

“May 2007 my husband and I had returned from a long (6 month) hospitalization/rehab for him following a severe brain injury he suffered in a motorcycle accident. Your writings encouraged us both and initially we spent our mornings together talking about what we had gotten out of them.

“In the months following, his mental/physical condition worsened. It has been so sad to watch him become angrier, more aggressive, paranoid and delusional. In November, it became necessary for me to move out due to higher risks of my safety, as he is now carrying a gun, and has purchased more weapons, which are in the home. There is an obsessive/compulsive/impulsive disorder, which has been magnified by the brain injury and has created much chaos for our family. A restraining order has been issued against him, and I now have to file for legal separation. None of our family or friends can believe the direction this has taken. “Why did God let him live if this was how he was going to turn out?” No one can answer that now.

“What I do know is that my God continues to be faithful to me as I bounce around house sitting for people until I know where I’m supposed to land more permanently. He has brought some amazing people into my life. God is faithful and I remain grateful.”

From spending mornings talking about the Catch to this? I can’t even fathom what this woman is going through. I feel compelled to ask you all to pray for this couple. Let’s focus our prayers together for the healing of this man’s mind, and the protection and provision for this woman’s future. Let’s pray in confidence and look forward to finding out what God has done. Maybe God let him live so that we could become a part of the healing.

Finally, this is a great lesson in being thankful in all things. I don’t know if I could be so grateful in her shoes.

“Oh how she loved the morning; So God took her in the afternoon.”

This is a line from a song by Terry Scott Taylor that I love. The song is a tender painting of a woman who loved to walk with God in the morning, so God made sure they had one last morning together. He would take her, but not disturb that sacred moment.

I love this for at least two reasons. First, heaven is going to be a glorious place that will eclipse our best moments on earth, but darn if some of those earthly moments aren’t pretty glorious in their own right. So much so that God wouldn’t touch them. What experiences do you have that would rival heaven?

There is something about our experience of God on this earth that transcends time and space while still rooted in it. It’s a moment of meeting that is as special to God as it is to us. I believe it is for moments like these that He made us, and nothing can take them away. And in this lies the second reason. There is something that God experiences with fallen man that can’t be duplicated in heaven. In heaven, total communication is a given. On earth, it’s a rare beauty to be savored. It’s a relationship that only the boundaries of earth could create.

We were made for this. To experience God in these frail, fallible bodies tied to the ground yet filled with eternity. This is the glory of our existence — that He would share these moments with us, and cherish them, too.

There was a man in the early history of the human race as recorded in Genesis whose name was Enoch, and the scriptures say that he walked with God so much so that he never died, God just walked him right into heaven. Wow. What a way to go.

In a recent interview in Christianity Today someone asked if he was worried about how more and more secularized the culture is becoming. His response was quite to the contrary, and he went on to point out three reasons he had hope for this current culture.

First, he said that people are looking for transcendence. They want mystery. They are over needing an explanation for everything. We put our faith in reason, science and education, and look where it has gotten us. People are open to spiritual solutions and thus more willing to hear about God, faith and mystery.

Second, People are looking for significance. The mass appeal of The Purpose Driven Life, both inside and outside the church, is proof of how hungry our culture is for meaning. We want our lives to count for something. More than making money or being famous, people want to make a difference with their lives.

And third, there is a great desire for community. Realizing that our culture has isolated and alienated us from each other, people today are aware of a void in their lives that only others can fill. Some are willing to give up cushy jobs and prestigious positions in order to function in a community of other like-minded people.

In other words, instead of being an entirely secularized culture, this is a day when people are seeking the very things that the gospel provides. This means that you and I can be bold about what it means to follow Christ. Instead of having to get everyone to stop what they are doing and consider Christ, we can affirm what they are looking for, and suggest they look over here.

The amazing thing about this man is that at his age, he is still culturally aware of the world and prophetically able to speak into it.

Timothy Dudley-Smith wrote in his biography of John Stott: