My Dad.

Thank you for your prayers for my dad.  Watching someone you love suffer is never easy.  We ask why?  We pray for relief…sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn’t.  Why does God allow suffering, especially for one who just recently became his child?  What father would allow his child to suffer?  Who am I to question God? I believe this question was already answered in Job 42: Then Job answered the LORD, and said,  I know that you can do everything, and that no thought can be withheld from you.  Who is he that hides counsel without knowledge?  Therefore I have uttered that which I have not understood; things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.  Hear, I beg you, and I will speak: I will demand of you, and you declare to me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eyes see you.  Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Does this help me to endure what my dad is going through right now? Yes indeed.  God can be trusted…there isn’t anything that escapes his complete sovereign control…He is a God of love…and there is just no way for us to understand the “whys” of life.  What we do know is that in this life, we are being made conformable to his likeness. “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death.”   Suffering not only changes us into his likeness (if we don’t resist), it also sobers us and draws our attention back to the throne of grace (both the sufferer and we who wait and pray)…we cling to God more when we are suffering. In Psalm 119 David wrote, “it is good that I have been afflicted that I might learn your statutes.” He also said, “Unless your law/word had been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.”  The Apostle Paul wrote,  “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  Rom 8.  Please continue to pray…it has been a long day…Dad did have a heart attack but there is more concern about the fluid in his lungs and other complications.  Tomorrow they are scheduling some procedures…we are praying for a miracle that he can be home for Thanksgiving!