Timing

This week will be full. This week should be fun and probably a bit exhausting. Tomorrow our good friends from college, the Kucks, are coming to visit and bringing their two little girls. I can't wait to meet them. Thursday my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew are coming to stay for a few days and Friday, Pete's grandparents come to stay for the weekend as well. On top of all that fun, Saturday we're having a birthday party for Jon who turns three on August 20th! I love having people in our home. That's one of the most exciting things to me about having a big house--lots of room to have people. This is going to be a bit of a whirlwind, but I'd rather have it than not! I just hope my introverted husband can take it. :) On a more serious note, in the midst of the busy moving chaos, God seems to be hunting me down this past week or so. I tend to get into these modes of self-reliance and He knows just how to snap me out of them. Most recently it was a book written by a friend of ours, Amy Hollingsworth. She wrote a book called Gifts of Passage, What the Dying Tell Us With the Gifts They Leave Behind. She was writing it when my brother Joe died and ended up telling a bit of our story in the book. She sent me a copy, which I received last week. God definitely used her telling of my own story to just drag me back to His feet again. I was amazed at the pain that was fresh all over again as I read and yet her whole point is pointing out God's graciousness to me. And that grace is so refreshing. He is so faithful throughout all of our trials and triumphs. I was encouraged to that end again this morning by a friend who quoted Spurgeon and I think I'll quote the entire post--it's too good to butcher! "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God."—Romans 8:28. Upon some points a believer is absolutely sure. He knows, for instance, that God sits in the stern-sheets of the vessel when it rocks most. He believes that an invisible hand is always on the world's tiller, and that wherever providence may drift, Jehovah steers it. That re-assuring knowledge prepares him for everything. He looks over the raging waters and sees the spirit of Jesus treading the billows, and he hears a voice saying, "It is I, be not afraid." He knows too that God is always wise, and, knowing this, he is confident that there can be no accidents, no mistakes; that nothing can occur which ought not to arise. He can say, "If I should lose all I have, it is better that I should lose than have, if God so wills: the worst calamity is the wisest and the kindest thing that could befall to me if God ordains it." "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." The Christian does not merely hold this as a theory, but he knows it as a matter of fact. Everything has worked for good as yet; the poisonous drugs mixed in fit proportions have worked the cure; the sharp cuts of the lancet have cleansed out the proud flesh and facilitated the healing. Every event as yet has worked out the most divinely blessed results; and so, believing that God rules all, that He governs wisely, that He brings good out of evil, the believer's heart is assured, and he is enabled calmly to meet each trial as it comes. The believer can in the spirit of true resignation pray, "Send me what thou wilt, my God, so long as it comes from Thee; never came there an ill portion from Thy table to any of Thy children."