Karen Rabbitt

FindingPeaceDevotionals.com

It's time to move. After more than four years with Typepad, my blog will now be found at  Finding Peace Devotionals. Right now, that URL goes to the home page of my new site. Soon it will link to the actual devotional page. For now, when you get to the home page, click on the "Finding Peace Devotionals" tab.

I'll continue to write a weekly devotional. You can subscribe (link on the side of the page) to get them delivered via Feedblitz. You can use an RSS feed to follow. Or you can bookmark the page and return to it on your own schedule.

Blessings to all my readers. Find me now at Finding Peace Devotionals .

If you're looking for the first chapter of Trading Fathers, go to the Trading Fathers tab at Karen Rabbitt

After all, Jesus

Will salvage radiation and hormone therapy, subsequent to surgery, cure my husband’s prostate cancer? I don’t know. In this uncertainty, I’m working on resting in the certain promises of Jesus, the incarnate God who weeps with us.

And it is work. It’s work to remember to pray all day. It’s work to affirm God’s unseen hand. It’s work to lie down and rest when the “what ifs” image through my mind. It’s work to remember God will win the war, even if Satan wins a battle now and then. It’s work to keep focused on God’s purposes rather than my preferences. It’s work to feel my sadness and anxiety rather than eat my feelings. (Not doing so well with that.)

On one level, my core beliefs make the work easy. God is good. Better to die from cancer than Alzheimer’s. God’s purposes are worth what they cost. On a day-to-day, “I want what I want” level, the work is harder.  I’m surprised, actually, that God has allowed it to go this far–cancer, surgery, radiation. At this level, reality sucks. And yet, at my deepest heart level, where I am aligned with the purposes of God, reality glows. At my core, I rest in that glow.

Because, after all, Jesus. After all this suffering, all our sadness and grief and loss, Jesus. We are on our way to his embrace, those of us who love his appearing. Jesus, after all, is worth keeping faith with, even though it’s hard work. Because he has counted us worth what we cost him. Glory.

Jesus, thank you for who you are. Help us do the work of resting in you, remembering that after all, you wait.

Promise Keeper God

 

Spring is compressed in central Illinois this year.  Usually the redbud, dogwood, and crab tree blooms are separated by a week or two.  This year, however, everything is blooming together. In the backyard, the weeping cherry waves its pink blossoms. On my morning walks, I stop to smell the viburnums at the library. Last night, biking back from dinner with friends, the crabs perfumed the air. Bluebells dress the pasture out at Homer Lake. Unlike some years when they turn brown from an untimely freeze, tulip magnolias have bloomed and are spreading pink petals at their feet.

This winter awakening reminds me of an April a few years ago in Washington, D.C.. The tulips painted the ground with reds and yellows around the monuments while the crabs, dogwoods, and redbuds stood in full-dress guard. Another spring we caught the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin. We walked to the Jefferson Memorial as the pink blooms fell at our feet. And once, a very long time ago, the wisteria across the front of the National Gallery was in bloom. Magnificent green and purple against the white marble.

Every spring is different. Sometimes I’m in a different place. Sometimes the sequence of reawakening life is spread out or interrupted. But so far, spring has arrived. Every year.

Just like God promised in the beginning:  “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22.

Father, you are a God who keeps his promises. Thank you.