Messengers from Heaven

At the very foundation of this whole journey for me is that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose.

I'm having to remind myself of that as some of the side effects of chemo begin to set in.

Elephant ear and lantana at Vanderbilt

But that's not the real difficulty. The real difficulty is thinking of others in much worse situations than mine. What about situations where disasters are nothing but a miserable loss of loved ones, possessions, and comfort?

There are people who have gone through such things and found the glory of God in it. The famous hymn, "It Is Well," was written by a Christian man who had lost his wife and two daughters in a shipwreck.

I thought of it today when my wife was reading me an article by a man who had lost his wife to cancer in a long, 2-year battle. What good was there in such suffering? Did it simply not matter because he wasn't "called according to God's purpose"?

I don't believe that. I believe that God makes the same offers, the same open doors, to non-Christians as to Christians. He is not partial, and he causes both sun to shine and rain to fall on the just and unjust. We are all given opportunity to lay hold of his grace and overcome.

The man in the article overcame in an unusual way. It's worth reading about.