Encouragement for your Friday

Hello sweet friends! How I have missed you! There is such sweet encouragement that comes to the soul from knowing others are praying on your behalf. Thank you so very much for lifting my family (and for reminding me that you are).

There has not been much change since the last update. Dad is trying to adjust to life at home. He was a very active man before his accident, so he is bored and frustrated by all the things he isn’t able to do. Two different therapists come each week to help maintain his body strength while he waits for his bones to heal. We’re doing our best to keep his spirits up, and Mom is doing well looking after him. I won’t give so many updates from here on out, but please do keep him (and my Mom) in your prayers as God brings them to mind.

My niece, Brooke sees the orthopedic doctor again next week to determine whether or not she will need surgery to repair her collar bone. I saw her a few days ago. The difference in her shoulders is quite evident, yet this is an improvement over how it appeared initially. I would appreciate your continued prayers for her, as well.

Not surprisingly, my devotional messages (from Streams in the Desert) over the last couple of weeks have been so incredibly fitting to our situation and delivered such peace to my soul. I’d love to share them all. I’ve opted to share one that's a bit lighter and based on a passage you’ve perhaps heard hundreds of times. If you’re in the midst of your own storm, I pray it falls fresh on your soul this day.


We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28)

What a tremendous claim Paul makes in this verse! He does not say, “We know that in some things,” “most things,” or even “joyful things” but “ALL things.” This promise spans from the very smallest detail of life to the most important, and from the most humbling of daily tasks to God’s greatest works of grace performed during a crisis.

Paul states this in the present tense: “God works.” He does not say, “worked” or “will work.” It is a continuing operation.

We also know from Scripture that God’s “justice [is] like the great deep” (Ps. 36:6); at this very moment the angels in heaven, as they watch with folded wings the development of God’s greatest plan, are undoubtedly proclaiming, “The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made” (Psalm 145:17).

Then when God orchestrates “all things…for the good,” it is a beautiful blending. He requires many different colors, which individually may be quite drab, to weave into the harmonious pattern.

Separate tones, notes, and even discords are required to compose melodious music anthems; a piece of machinery requires many separate wheels, parts, and connections. One part from a machine may be useless, or one note from an anthem may never be considered beautiful, but taken together, combined and completed, they lead to perfect balance and harmony.

We can learn a lesson of faith from this: “You do not realize what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:7) J.R. Macduff

In a thousand trials, it is not just give hundred of them that work “for the good” of the believer, but nine hundred and ninety-nine, plus one. George Mueller