Ah Chooooooo

Today is one of those days. One of those days when everyone in our house is sick. We haven't been all summer, and it has been very nice. Last week was VBS though, and you can bet that the nursery had the germies. Doesn't it always? My friend, who's son now has bronchitis due to this same VBS nursery, was speaking to me today and said, "I'm thinking, Lord, I just served you all week at VBS, shouldn't that at least get me a healthy kid for the week?"

Cute. And you know I'd already thought of that too, but of course it doesn't work that way. We are never promised any special treatment or favors or healthy kids when we are serving.

My old pastor contracted podoconiosis while on a mission trip in Asia. That was some 20 years ago I think, and he still suffers with the side effects today. Corrie ten Boom, a strong Christian woman who saved many Jews, suffered in a prison camp in Germany during the Holocaust, where her sister then died. On July 5, Behnam Sabti, a Christian, died instantly when a bomb exploded under his car in Mosul, Iraq, according to VOM Canada and Asia News. According to local reports, Behnam was killed because of his "religious identity."

Does any of that mean that God loves Corrie or my pastor or Behnam or my own daughter for that matter, any less? No, of course not. Does Jesus death on the cross mean that God loved Jesus any less? No, of course not.

I like how Corrie ten Boom, who I mentioned earlier and whose book, The Hiding Place, you should really read if you have not before, put it, "God does not have problems. Only plans." And her sister? Who died inside the camp? Before she died she is quoted as saying to Corrie, ""There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

And those, those are words to live by.