Bad, brutal news... followed by good news

A YWAM friend of mine wrote this today... just a few months after his wife of 30+ years passed away with a sudden disease...

Francis Schaeffer said we should always start with the bad news, and end with the good.
So here goes with the bad news; and please fasten your seat belts because it’s not just bad, it’s brutal:

Everyone close to you is going to die. 
Most will go peacefully we hope, but some will die in horrific accidents, some with wasting diseases.
And the Lord is not going to heal all of them, even though He could.

Why not? Why does He not control every detail of everything on earth, and make it all better?  Because He set this world up for love, not for control; and as Jan Amos Comenius said, “There is no control in love . . .”
Love risks, and as the other old song says, “love hurts”. Besides, He left us the job of making everything better, for all of Creation.
 

There are no guarantees on this earth; the guarantees are only in Eternity. He indeed promises us eternal love and eternal life, but down here we have no contracts with the Lord; He owes us nothing, because He has already given us everything.

We need to remember how many times each of us have prayed, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven . . .” and not be surprised when His will is done, and not ours. We blithely forget our prayers; but He does not. He takes our prayers so much more seriously than we do . . .
As the old saying goes, Today is all we have, and it’s a gift . . . that’s why it’s called “the present”.

So here is some good news, there are some strategies for living that work for me:

• The most important is to lean into the Lord (Note: best to have learned how to do this before the unthinkable happens . . .)
• Read the book ‘Heaven is for Real’ if you haven’t already – Cynthia did
• Laugh daily, through the tears if necessary (hang out with little kids, they laugh a lot more than adults do)
• Watch at least one sunset a day
• Eat all the Swiss chocolate you can
• Adopt as many flowers as you can handle
• Tend your relationships even better than your flowers, because they are your greatest treasures . . . they are the only things you can take with you into eternity.
• Dance as if nobody’s watching (yes, there is one song that used to get me dancing when alone in my living room, and no, it’s not going up on YouTube, and no, I’m not even telling you which song it is)
• Love all you can
• Live as if there’s no tomorrow – because sometimes there isn’t, here on this old earth.

Bye now, I’m off to spend time with my flowers; but maybe I’ll put that song on and dance a little first, it’s been a long time since I’ve done that . .