Strength, dignity and laughter

Harriet is asleep upstairs.  She was in our home years ago when Ted and I were on the associate staff of Agape International Training School,  the branch of Campus Crusade (now named "CRU")  that prepares their missionaries for ministry.  Many of the candidates came to be with us for personal reasons. Some came as a team to become better acquainted with one another before heading off to  countries whose name I couldn't even pronounce.  I stay in the prayer loop through my blog with many of those precious ones we met and loved during that time of our lives.  Harriet needs rest and that is what she will receive this week. Later today she will meet some of the dear women who come to be discipled.  I will not require of her a missionary report; rather she can simply listen as these dear ones tell her of the way the Lord snatched them out of some of the major religions of the world and set their feet upon Jesus, the Solid Rock.

A few days ago it became very clear to me that I needed to go and nestle close to my oldest and dearest friend,  Char who lives in the valley below.  My friend and I talked, read, prayed, shopped, lunched and laughed together.  Do you have such a friend? Are you such a friend to a fellow warrior? "God is sovereign". We Christians talk about it; we have experienced it, then comes the last chapter of our life and the tapestry God has been weaving still has dangling threads that do not yet seem to form a finished design.   

...so what it the purpose of the unfinished design?  A better question is: What keeps an 86-year-old woman like me still running toward the arms of my Heavenly Father? I have taught countless women about the awesome woman of Proverbs 31. A verse from that passage popped out at me as Char and I were together:  "She will be a woman of strength and dignity and will laugh at the future." Remember how Sarah "laughed at the future" because she didn't believe for a minute that God was going to give her a child at her ancient age?  She took a short-cut and we all know what that lapse of faith is bringing upon our entire world. "Laughing at the future" seems like something a brainless woman would do.  I have caught some whiffs of fresh faith and will resume my race toward the finish line, remembering to laugh because my Father is steadily weaving, even though I cannot see His Hand. 

...and now back to my bed on my deck at 3:30 A.M. Perhaps I can go back to sleep now that these thoughts that awakened me are transferred to my computer. The days are the longest of the year now and soon the summer sun will pop up over the mountain to the east, the woodpeckers, blue jays and sparrows in the oaks around me will begin to twitter, the red tailed hawks will take their first morning soar and the two black crows who appointed themselves to awakan me when I sleep on my deck will sweep over my head and Harriet's and my day will begin. 

Morning has broken like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.

Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning!

Praise for them springing, fresh from the Word!

Love,  Jo