Just Another Eventful Week

God’s love takes broken things and makes them beautiful. As I write these words, Ellie Holcomb is about 30 feet away singing them at The Lighthouse Church. 
I have come to understand that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put me back together again. Only the amazing grace of my Lord and Savior Jesus has salvaged me from the wreckage.
I surely would have been leveled and left for dead if it hadn’t been for the reality of faith pumping lasting truth into my weary soul and battered heart. I think my best quality is that God has so much room to shine through me because there are many holes in my being.
I may be a cracked pot, but God has never abandoned this jar, and because of that, there is quite a display of glorious light to be seen.
Nothing has ever been easy for me. I am not a fortunate son by any means. My relationship with God is not just a casual compartment of my life.
His love for me is everything I am and all I hope to be. I have lost loved ones. I have buried my own children. I have every reason to be forever paralyzed with enough issues to fill a medical journal, but God has been my ever-present help and sincere strength in the midst of my struggle with anxiety, worry, physical issues and OCD tendencies.
If you are wondering what keeps me going when nothing goes the way I had hoped, it is the reality of our Lord who keeps the very words that he claims to be.
This past week my daughter Leah was taken to the hospital for an emergency C-section. She was eight months pregnant when all of a sudden, her blood pressure began to spike and it became too dangerous for this child to stay inside of her Mama. Needless to say, I became very proactive in my prayers, begging God to spare our family from yet another tragedy.
I got out my “fighting words,” as Ellie Holcomb sings.
As a matter of fact, she was just singing it as I penned this last sentence. “Fighting words” are when you combat the lies of hell with the truth of heaven.
We are not alone nor will we have to go through anything without the most righteous chaperone that ever lived.
Jesus brought us all the most precious of gifts in that little Lucia Ann Savage, my newest granddaughter. She was born four pounds and 10 ounces and is doing remarkably well. A blood clot was discovered in my Leah, and the doctors have the insight to monitor this so that she may be spared of what could have been a disaster if everything had gone full term.
We never know what is really going on from our seats of limited vision. Yet God sees it all and works even when we detest what is up on the screen. Thank you, Lord, for being God in spite of what we do or think.
Ellie Holcomb’s new album is called “Red Sea Road.” She is singing that one as I finish up my thoughts for this week. Nobody in their right mind would plan a journey that would force human beings to walk through a large body of water, especially when they are being chased by an army that outnumbered them and was looking to slaughter them.
Even the Israelites cried out to God, “Why in the world would you take us out of Egypt just to drown us in the desert?”
But God had a plan to make his power undeniably known to his people so that they would know that they could trust him no matter where no matter what and no matter when.
We never walk alone on a Red Sea Road. Thank you, Jesus for once again being our reason to sing praise because even in our dark, you show up with the light. And no batteries are necessary.
When my baby Leah had her baby Lucia this week, I could not contain the love flowing out of this Papa’s soul. I would do anything I could to fight for her and my new granddaughter’s life.
When I walked into the nursery and viewed this tiny little display of God’s creation, I once again was reminded that when it all comes down, only love and life remain.
How blessed we are and how foolish we are to be so ignorant of what God has been faithful to make known to us. I want to walk in the light as the Lord is in the light and let it all fall where it may! Scriptures tell us that he has allowed our hearts to fall in pleasant places.
Any place that Jesus may be present is exactly where we want to be.
Thank you, Lord, for the gift of yet another amazing week in this thing called life that you have ordained for me to live. Thank you that I have laughed and cried. I have prayed and vented.
I have been up and down and all around emotionally. But when it all comes down, if there is anything good that happens in life, it’s from Jesus.
And for that I am grateful. Trust the Lord family. He is the ultimate hope and resting place.  
ED. NOTE: The author is senior pastor of The Lighthouse Church, 1248 Route 9 South, Cape May Court House.