Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.
When I was younger this little verse about good health wouldn’t have meant much to me. But as I get older things have changed. My body doesn’t work like it once did. I now have to tell myself how to get out of bed. Ok, turn slowly on my right side, push myself up until I’m sitting, put one foot down, now bounce up to where both feet will be touching the floor. Ah, I’m standing.
Or I start off the day thinking I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I try to open the jelly jar. I can’t. I try using a rubber gripper. No good. I hit around the lid (hard) with a knife. Still nothing. It turns out I don’t want jelly after all.
Now I can hardly put into words how much I would appreciate the prayers of a friend like John, caring about my health, praying that all will go well with me. Thankfully, I have that someone.
When I stand before a doctor and hear a report I do not want to hear, and I fall backwards, I land in the arms of someone who cradled children and grieving mothers—someone
who cut wood and nailed boards together and formed stars and made the world.
When I feel my heart start to break because one of my kids is so sick and I sit up to watch over her, I feel Him standing beside me all night. I know I slept, if only a little, but He didn’t.
When I watch my friends hurt and am so incredibly sad I’m gasping for air, I hear Him say, “I remember feeling that way too.”
When I weep, I know that He wept. I know it as I stand here rooted between this crazy, upending, inconceivable idea of God arriving as a baby, and his going away and saying something as unbelievable as, “I’ll be back. And while I’m gone, I won’t leave you alone.”
During this advent season I hope you know you are never alone.
Gail Foresee