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Can There Be A Good God?

I started reading One Thousand Gifts back in July when we were up at our piece of heaven (aka Ernst Island). But then I was reading during the night when insomnia was keeping me up, and my heart was still healing and I just needed to be busy.

I started rereading it this past week and Goodness! Did my heart need this. To read it, really read it and soak up all the little things that Ann is telling us.
 

Can there be a good God? (p12)

I’m not sure I can tell you how many times I’ve asked this question. How can God be good when cancer happens, when horrible deaths happen.
How is God a good God when my father is waiting for someone else to die so he can live?

But this sermon at church a few weeks back reminded me why and how God can be good.  
God promises believers in Jesus that he will do good in and through our lives no matter what happens.

God will make all things work for good. It doesn’t mean that life will be good, and that only good things will happen to us. It doesn’t mean that it’s everything is going to be easy, but God will work every circumstances we come up against and work it for Good.

At the end of the school year this past May our community was hit hard with wondering why. A little girl was getting off the school bus and was struck by garbage truck. She has spent months in the ICU of a big city hospital and still has a long road ahead of her, and as a community we wonder why. Why would this happen if God is good?

In August this 13 year old girl’s mom told our local paper this - “It’s a faith journey for us, just the trust and the hope and the belief that we are held by God and there’s nothing that happens that’s outside of his sovereign care for us,” After weeks and months of wondering if her little girl would be okay; would wake up and be her daughter again, or a totally different person. But standing on the knowledge that we a held by God in all situations, and that he will turn it all to good if we believe in him.

I don’t understand everything that happens. And I’m okay with not always understanding; well I’m starting to be. Because I know that God will work all things for God if we believe in him. God will use the situations I encounter to shape me and make me more like Jesus. And so when I wonder why, I stop, I take that thought and replace it with a prayer to help heal my unbelief and help me become more like his son.

I’m linking up with Annie and Margaret as we all read through One Thousand Gifts.

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The Only Words

Have you ever had a book just stop you in your tracks and make you realize you could be doing so much better at life?

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Vonkamp has done that for me, and to be honest I’m not even that far into the book. 

source

Tiffany recommended the book to me a while ago, and while we were away at the Island early in the summer I read the whole thing – well I read it at midnight when I couldn’t sleep, but I was just reading not absorbing it. So I started re reading it this weekend. Goodness! That’s pretty much all I can say! Goodness how much did I miss – I am so thankful that I’m re reading this.

I pulled Ann up on Google this morning, after reading about a Zhers Market grocery store – something I thought was only local to us here, and low and behold she lives less than an hour from me. How was it that someone from South Carolina was the one telling me about a book written an hour from me! I watched Ann’s interview on 100 Huntley Street on YouTube, and one phrase really hit me.

The only words that matter are the words you live.

What words am I living?

Thankfulness?

Inspiration?

Unconditional love?

Humility, hope?

What words is my life living? And how am I using those words to influence my world? Am I leaving the world a better place at the end of the day.

Thoughts I’m thinking while I settle down to bed. Been a long day.

Ann – thank you so much for sharing your journey. I can’t wait to get the hardcopy book and start making notes. And gift a copy to my friend, and my mother in law. I’m excited to see how you’ll touch their lives too.  

babE Brother?!?!?

Grayson is joining the big brother club some April - well we hope little babE2 wait's until April to arrive. 

We're over the moon and are so excited to be growing our family. And so so blessed to have another Ernst to introduce to the world in 2013. 

 

The desires of our hearts

I love a summer salad. I remember many nights when my dad would be working late and my sister would be out with her now husband and my brother would be at a friends or a church thing, so my mom and I would head out the garden and pick some fresh lettuce and fresh pepper and tomatoes, and throw it into a great salad. Add some hard boiled eggs and some cheese and goodness it tasted amazing!! There were times when I would eat all the lettuce first and leave all the fixings in the bottom and just eat those at the end – did you ever do that? Do you do that? There are times when I still do that. Tonight we had an amazing baby romaine with strawberries and goat’s cheese and pecans. And I was so tempted to eat all the lettuce first and leave the fixings with balsamic dressing and eat them at the end. 

 

So what does salad have to do with the desires of our hearts??

Well we have this tendency to want to take all the fixings – the great little bits of God’s word and leave the rest. Leave the lettuce and just eat the strawberries. We love the parts where God talks about giving us everything we desire, providing for us, filling our cups until they overflow. But what we seem to skip over is the fact that those promises that God makes to us are contingent on us living our lives according to his word. He makes promises to us in return for our lives dedicated to him.

Psalm 84:11, TLB. "For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk along his paths."

God will give us everything good, but we have to walk along his path. Did you read that? Did you hear that? He will give us EVERYTHING! If we follow his path. 

We can have all the good fixings, but we have to eat the lettuce too. If we are attentive to God and the desires he has for our lives, and live his will in our loves, then He will give us everything we could ever desire.