A Word in Season

I've been tied to my desk for most of the day - such a super summers day too!  But I have had to set up a new account for managing my work related income and expenditure and getting the opening balances right is a challenge.  Until recently all expenses and purchases relating to the church, Rural Sunrise and others were usually initially covered with a credit card and then reimbursements passed through my personal current account until I discovered this was illegal!  So the work has to be done and has to be absolutely right for HMRC, and I guess it will feel good when the job is finished.


I spoke with Sylvia again and passed on to her and Alfred the many messages of support that had come to me for them (see yesterday's post).  As I had prayed for them and for Esther and the boys a passage of scripture had come to mind, which I alluded to in yesterday's blog:


Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 
2 Corinthians 1: 3-5


We spoke about the wonderful way in which God brings his word to our minds and hearts at time of need and it reminded me of the day after my father died.  He lay in a hospital bed and asked me to commit him to the Lord.  Then they increased the morphine and my mother sat with him and held his hand until he passed away.  His only words to her were "I'm alright".  Mum coped amazingly the following hours, witnessing to doctors and nurses of her Saviour.  That night she slept in the guest room in our community house where she woke early with sunshine streaming through the windows and - for the first time - felt those waves of loss and grief hit her hard.


Reaching for the Gideon's Bible beside her bed she cried to God to say something that would meet her need in that moment.  She opened an unfamiliar Bible at random and found herself looking at Ezekiel 24:16-17.  Of course you and I know that there could not possibly be anything to comfort someone who has just lost the love of their life, but take another look!


I could give you a well reasoned argument for the Bible being God's word, but the clincher is that God speaks his word through these words in a way that touches our hearts and changes our lives.  Thank God for his word - he has yet more light and truth to break forth from it,  as Pastor John Robinson said in 1620 when bidding farewell to those who became known as the Pilgrim Fathers.