Good morning…
One of the beauties of our Everyday Blog is its interactive quality. As subscribers write me daily, we converse back and forth. In addition, when a subscriber unsubscribes, he or she can choose to let me know the reason why. One who unsubscribed this week wrote to me this message: “Honestly, recently (the last 9 months to a year) the topic of every devotional has been death – death from cancer, sudden death, grieving etc. I do know death is a part of life, comes to all of us, every day could be our last, etc. At age 64, dying and…” Her message met its word limit.
Pausing, pondering, praying for a while, my head and my heart tried to sense God’s response.
“I got your heartfelt message as you unsubscribed from our blog, and I totally understand what you are saying about loss and grief and so many of our posts revealing God in the midst of our collective pain,” I felt led to eventually email her. “As I scrolled back over the past few weeks I have seen some messages that might appeal to you. Convicted by My Coffee Pot. Prayer Is Free Time With God. Let Your Life Speak. Peace Is Louder Than Bombs. God’s Word Lights Our Path. You might want to check these out.
I feel like God has placed me in a very privileged place in our community. Each morning He uses my typing fingers to speak into the experiences of everyday life. Because I am quite connected through our large church and our kids’ school, I am very aware of the challenges that many in our community wake up to each day. I sense our LORD using my pen like a microphone, speaking about prayer and healing and God’s presence with us always. I could write daily about politics or football or nature, wise books, or quirky mishaps. These musings slip into our blog often, yet not always in each title.
It is an honor to journal daily with God in the early morning hours, craft a portion of our conversation into a blog message, then press ‘send’ to expand God’s presence into our community. It seems God uses me to speak into pain frequently because I see joy and hope and resurrection there. I see His power actively at work in our darkest hours and the light of our LORD somehow shines through undeniably. I know you carry God’s light with you daily, so writings on loss, grief, and healing might not appeal, but for those in our world who crave companionship in the dark, I think God uses my fragile fingers to hold an important flashlight. I would love to talk over all this at lunch sometimes soon. If you are interested, please let me know, Sue.”
It did not take long for her to respond: “I would love to have lunch, coffee or whatever with you, Sue! Let me know what days work for you. Perhaps next week. Honestly, I do understand your position and your connection to our community and especially to our grieving community. I don’t even like to say it like that because we are all grieving something at all times, whether it’s loss through death or the loss of a relationship, the loss of health, opportunities or just disappointment in ourselves. I would love to discuss this with you and I would love to resubscribe to SuetoYou. I don’t want to miss our connection and I do appreciate your response. Please email me the link to subscribe again. I look forward to getting together with you!”
Write this down for the next generation so people not yet born will praise God: “God looked out from his high holy place; from heaven he surveyed the earth. He listened to the groans of the doomed, he opened the doors of their death cells.” Write it so the story can be told…so God’s praise will be sung…wherever people gather together… (Psalm 102:18-22, MSG).
…Sue…
