Thinking out loud about temporal and eternal matters
This was drafted on the 12th:  it isn't the 15th yet but anticipating it as we have our annual plumbing challenges and this time they are plural.  Leaks, repairs, more leaks, more repairs, and I feel like my mother Eve (as in Adam and) impatient to have things taken care of NOW!
Wrestling here on the computer as I pray; and patience is a dangerous thing to pray for, but I don't want God to be dishonored by my behaviour/response to this.
So I pray for God's grace, knowing He will provide it, while waiting this cold Saturday for yet another plumber to assist with yet another issue, and give thanks that we know plumbers and don't have to choose one willy-nilly from the yellow pages and hope matters won't be made worse.
Thinking out loud December 12, 2009
Since I began this, word of two deaths came, one an older man whose death was sudden, unexpected (like my Dad's), the other a younger man who was diagnosed with cancer just in August.  These leave my petty concerns regarding our plumbing issues as just that:  petty.  So the following are thoughts about death in December and what it means to believers in Christ.
Death in December
Whatever means death uses to accomplish God's will,
When the heart is still, the mourning is not,
However silent it may seem,
It is like a dream without an end
From which there is no waking
For family or friend.
Sorrow is the companion of death and stays
With those so bereaved for days and years
And mocks their tears.
For Christians, compassion comes in the form of Christ,
Given this month in a smelly stable,
Laid in a manger, birthed God as man to be given
God as man for God,
Born to bring death to death,
Born to be our sins' offering,
Born to suffer in ways we cannot imagine so that
We need not.
Death and its companion sorrow will face their end
One God's ordained tomorrow, and tears will cease,
In eternal peace and joy, and worship.
But this day death and this day sorrow
Companion even we who know this is not all,
And we seek in our grief that Compassion,
Find our comfort through the Comforter.
December Tears
I feel the start of December tears,
Remembering as I do the years
My Dad's parents died--
Many years apart--
But still the pain remains in my heart.
I feel the start of December tears,
Recalling the first of the years
Since my own Dad passed away,
Celebrations no longer the same
Though the Christmas story is told
From Luke and from Matthew unfolds.
I feel the start of December tears
For those who celebrate with tears
Yet know the joy of this One Birth
Of the One who will wipe all tears away.
I feel the start of December