This I Know

Sometimes things just stop you in your tracks. Make you consider life again, and what it means.

It started last Saturday...
A sore throat. By Sunday a serious sinus infection had set in. I was going to work New Year's Day, but felt too sick. I worked the rest of the week, but it was just miserable, with constant stuffiness, nosebleeds, headache...

Wednesday by noon I was feeling a little sorry for myself. I was working on the corn planter, and the guys were fiddling with a skid steer in the shop, filling the room with fumes. I was getting frustrated and cross...

When my phone beeped. It was a text from a friend. About another friend. The family we stayed with when we went to Ohio September 2011. I had seen them once again this past September, and had a pleasant conversation with the father, Raymond. A down-to-earth man who ran a small excavating business. A man with a pleasant smile and an encouraging word and a spiritual perspective. A man I barely knew, but I felt comfortable with. We talked about relationships, disappointments, finding God's will for our lives. We discussed the shop he had been building at his place.

And as I looked at my phone Wednesday afternoon the surroundings dimmed and seemed far away. For Raymond Miller: father, husband, friend, had fallen off the roof of that shop...and died.

I've had the rest of the week to think about it. I did chores for friends so they could attend the funeral, and the family was never far from my mind. It touches a tender chord in me, as those of you who know me will understand. I know what the shock, the pain, the transitions are like. And as we "weep with them that weep", some of us truly do understand. That's the way our Father planned it.

I don't know why these things happen. But "It is of the LORD's mercies we are not consumed" and sometimes maybe we should  ask why these things don't happen. The risks I take all the time in my dangerous occuptaion, taking safety for granted way too much...next week could be my last day..we don't know...

But this I know. That God send His Son to the world, and through Him we have hope.

Here are some different words to one of my favorite songs:

I Cannot Tell

I cannot tell why He, the King of Heaven,

Should leave the peace of all eternity,

Why God Himself should lay aside His splendor

To leave the Father's side and come to me.

But this I know: our silence filled with singing,

And all our darkness fled from heaven's light

When Christ the Lord, so human, yet so holy,

In love was born a child for me that holy night!

I cannot tell why He, the Joy of Heaven,

Should give Himself to suffer for my sin,

Why Holy God should love me in my shamefulness,

Why He should die to draw my soul to Him.

But this I know: that Christ the Lord is risen,

And praise His name, He's risen now in me!

Because He lives, I'll rise to life eternal!

He took my guilty heart, and I'm forever free!

I cannot tell when He will rule the nations,

How He will claim His loved ones as His own;

And who can tell the holy jubilation

When all His children gather 'round His throne.

But this I know: all flesh will see His glory,

And skies will burst as all creation sings.

The Son will rise on one eternal morning

When Christ, the Savior of the world, is Lord and King!

Words by Ken Bible, inspired by William Y. Fullerton
Music: Traditional Irish Melody
© 1996 by Pilot Point Music. CCLI Song #2120519