Blessings

Ezekiel 34:26 “I will cause my people and their homes around my holy hill to be a blessing. And I will send showers, showers of blessings, which will come just when they are needed.”

My wife and I recently attended the Casting Crowns concert in Duluth. It was an amazing night, featuring great singing, the performers sharing their stories, and prayer. One of the performers that night was a woman named Laura Story. Laura shared about the trials life has thrown at her and her husband, Martin. In 2006 Martin was hospitalized with a brain tumor. It wasn’t cancerous, but it was growing aggressively. They had been married less than two years and suddenly their lives took a huge detour. Martin almost died and at one point he was being kept alive by machines. He has suffered memory and some vision loss. For the past seven years Martin has not been able to work full time so he has toured with Laura and helped with her ministry as he is able. It is not the life they had planned yet they are making it work and finding blessings and hope on the new path God has put them on. Their suffering has allowed them both to minister to hurting people in ways that would not have been possible before their suffering.

Laura has written a song about their journey titled, Blessings. Laura says, “The song shows that we still have more questions than answers,” Laura says. “But there’s a decision that I find God is asking us to make: whether we’re going to judge God based on our circumstances, or whether we are going to choose to interpret our circumstances based on what we hold to be true about God.”

Her song in part, “Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops- What if Your healing comes through tears- What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near- What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise- What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life- Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy- What if trials of this life-The rain, the storms, the hardest nights- Are your mercies in disguise” She says of the album, “It is about worshipping God when life is hard.”

“Worshipping God when life is hard.” To see beyond this life to what lies beyond it. To find a cause greater than ourselves. To keep fighting and choose to believe God is still there even when we cannot hear or feel him. To keep believing, trusting and seeking God even when He seems to be ignoring our prayers, to be ignoring our pleas.

Abraham, Paul, Joseph, David, Noah they were able to endure all their suffering because they knew God was for them. They endured tears, rain drops and sleepless nights knowing that there was a prize awaiting them, knowing God’s blessing would come, “Just when they were needed.”