God With Us

So many mornings recently I waken with hands that feel stiff and achy.  It’s not crushing, or insurmountable, but the ache is present, and it takes a few hours to get my fingers and grip to work as I would prefer them to.  I look down at my hands and see the years passing is becoming more and more evident.  It’s actually somewhat comforting to look down and see the way my mom’s hands used to look, during the tumultuous years of my teenage self, when I desperately needed my mom’s gentle hands of guidance.  (I still need them.)  Most mornings I wish that I could visit my 20’s self and tell her to enjoy every day she awoke with no aches.  And as the time passes, my aching hands are just another reminder that this body is not supposed to last forever.  I am an eternal soul in an expiring body.

This reality has been settling in, as I read these words in Hebrews, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he was looking forward to a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.  {They} were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own….they are longing for a better country- a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”  (Chapter 11:  8-10, 13-16)

I believe these bodies we currently live in are just tents, not buildings with foundations; and this earth is not our eternal home.   The freedom from aging and disease is not going to a reality for my body this side of Heaven.  Yes, I believe fully that God can and does heal some of our diseases.  I believe He is capable of healing all of our diseases, and yet He doesn’t always heal, at least not in the way we would want or expect healing.  Could it be that all of our healing is assured, just like Abraham’s inheritance was assured, and yet he died while in faith without ever having actually received the inheritance in his earthly body?  He was not a resident of earth and he was longing for a heavenly residence.  His inheritance came after he closed his eyes in his earthly tent, and opened them in the home with a foundation built by God.   Some of us in these tents will actually experience miraculous interventions and healings, and all of us are going to experience God’s faithfulness no matter the circumstances of our lives.   In His loving kindness, He always offers His presence, and somehow even though he is omnipresent, He is “near to the broken hearted;” closer to us in the middle of our suffering.   

On this side of our Heavenly home, I am praying with faith for the healing of my daughter.  I see her pain in this earthly tent, and I believe that she will be free someday.  And maybe she will be one of us who experience healing here, but I am assured that her complete healing will come, eternally.  My mom has rheumatoid arthritis, dad has Parkinson’s, my sister in law has Lupus, three of my sweet children have collagen disorders, and our dear friends are currently suffering with metastatic colon cancer, scoliosis, brain cancer, chronic pain, Parkinson’s, and a myriad of other diseases and trials.   After the gigantic clot in Kit’s femoral vein he has a one in three chance of developing another life threatening blood clot while in this life.  On Tuesday we will be meeting with a specialist to try and determine why his liver is not acting as it should.  The most common causes of liver disease are not reality for him (alcohol, medications, iron problems etc).  So we are facing the unknowns with the certainty that these bodies are not supposed to last, and that we will all be free someday to experience life without decay.  We face the unknowns with the certainty that God is with us. 

In James 1 we read these words, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.“  As I pray with faith for healing and relief of suffering for my family and my dearly loved ones, I am also thankful that NO MATTER WHAT, God will use our sufferings for the finishing work of making us mature and ready for our eternal homes. 

How can I have hope as I write about failing bodies, or when my hands remind me that maybe genetics will exact it’s toll from me?  Because when I put this computer down, I will walk into my kitchen, right past the sweet collections of nativity sets that are used to decorate for Christmas.  Emmanuel, GOD with us, came into this broken down place so that I would never have to walk in this world without God’s presence.  Jesus said that He came for me to live life to the full, and that when He ascended into Heaven He would be preparing a place for me, and then He would return to bring me there.  He also promised to send the Spirit to be with me.  So God with us, came into this world, and walked around in a body that was breakable, and now He is building my eternal home, that won’t be a tent any longer.  It’s almost Christmas, and in this season of preparing to celebrate Emmanuel, I have hope that my eternal soul will not always be fixed in a body that will wear out.  If you are waiting in faith for the miraculous, HOLD ON!  Cling to hope.  Emmanuel was promised, and He came to be God with us.  He promised He would return, and our eternal homes will never decay.