Sunday, January 31, 2010

I don't want to forget....

I am going to write this down so I don't forget. David, Kate and I have been reading John Piper's book A Sweet and Bitter Providence on the book of Ruth. Kate flew through it and LOVED it...she said it was one of the best books she has ever read. She read this to me and we were both in tears. What God does in our lives is so sweet and merciful...even in the difficulties. Read on and absorb...get the book.
"Sweetie Pie" p. 122
This pledge God has made to his people is ungreakable. No famine or death can break it. I saw it in a parable. I was visiting some of our elderly people in a nursing home. I got on the elevator with a woman in a wheelchair who was old, misshapen, and confused. Her head wobbled meaninglessly and she uttered senseless sounds. Her mouth hung open. Then I noticed that a well dressed man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, was pushing her chair. I wondered who he was. Then as we all got off the elevator, I heard him say, "Watch your feet, Sweetie-pie."
Sweetie Pie. As I walked to the car, I thought...if a marriage covenant between a man and a woman produces that kind of fidelity and commitment and affection under those circumstances, then surely under the great and merciful terms of the New Covenant, sealed with the blood of his Son (Luke 22:20), God has no difficulty calling you and me (sinful and sick as we are) sweet names. And if he does, there is no truth more unshakable in all the world than this: For them and for us the best is yet to come. God is at work in the darkest times--for our good and Christ's glory. He will see to it that the glory of his Son fills the earth and that in him we find everlasting joy.