Talking Wall

Today we will celebrated the life and service of my longest and dearest friends’ dad.  He was our doctor, friend, brother in Christ.  The kind of man that sat through a Micheal W. Smith/DC Talk concert for his pre-teen daughter and her friend, who made blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings before church, and who risked his own life and career to save my dad’s.  He  will be missed by many many people.   

We will also cry for members of our church who will deliver a new baby girl with trisomy 18 today.  She is expected to live only a matter of hours at most.   And we will also congratulate the arrival of a new baby boy any moment now. 

My heart is very heavy but hopeful.  It is how Christians will live this life.  Sorrowful yet rejoicing.  Weighed down, but looking forward to Jesus who will wipe away our tears.  Come Lord Jesus Come!

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.  For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;  always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self  is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,  as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal”

2 Corinthians 4:5-18