Series: The Word
Isaiah 46:4 ESV
Jeremiah 29:11 ESV
From the time I was very small I remember talking to my great-grandmothers and watching them with a sense of curiosity and wonder.
My father’s grandmother was a kind woman who looked intently at my face when she spoke to me. She had a gentle smile and when she touched me she was ever so careful.
I didn’t know until later that this gentle woman of faith road in a covered wagon with her husband and my grandfather across the Great Plains from the Midwest to Montana.
They homesteaded land in that great state. After they had been there for a few years, my Great-Grandfather “took ill” and he passed away when he was 33 years old.
My Great Grandmother Flo stayed in Montana and farmed the land as long as she could with my grandfather. Eventually, she rented out the farm and home and returned to the midwest with her son.
I remember visiting her on Sunday afternoon with my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather preceded his Mother in death. After grandpa died we would still visit my great grandmother in a nursing home. I remember a sadness about her after her only child passed away. Even then, she lived several more years.
She believed in Jesus all the days of her life.
Isaiah 46:4 tells us,
“Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”
After I married and had children of my own I asked my dad questions about his grandmother.
I learned that when she returned to the Midwest with my grandfather, she settled in Caldwell County, Missouri where she opened a Millinery Shop (she sold hats and accessories). She eventually met and married a judge from that area who had lost his wife and had a young daughter to raise.
I remember calling him Great-Grandpa. He was a jovial man who was a believer as well. I really liked him.
My grandfather and grandmother would go visit them every Sunday afternoon. My dad’s parents owned a grocery store in Kansas City and they were closed on Sunday. From time to time I would go from Jackson County to Caldwell County to visit my great-grandparents with my grandparents.
That is just one part of the faith story of my family.
I had the privilege of growing up in a family where my great grandparents, my grandparents, and my parents were believers.
I can’t imagine any other kind of life.
I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to face each day without Jesus in my life.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to not pray to God.
I can’t imagine what it would feel like if Jesus was not beside me.
All I know is that it makes me very sad. I suppose that’s why every chance I get when God sends me someone who is searching and asking for help, I tell them my story.
I tell them that Jesus has been beside me all the days of my life. Part of my story includes a near death experience when I was six months old. Of course, my dad told me the story.
I had been very ill and I took a turn for the worse one afternoon in early 1954. My fever was 106.2. My parents took me to the hospital and the doctors broke the fever very quickly with ice. That set off a series of convulsions. My veins collapsed.
My parents were told I would not survive and if I did there would be serious brain damage.
My dad prayed.
He was a believer but that day he prayed like he had never prayed before. Within an hour, things started to turn around. The doctors said it was a miracle.
Obviously, I did survive.
If I had brain damage, I really wasn’t aware of it. The only residual effect is that I’ve always had difficulty memorizing information, but with a little extra work and time I graduated from high school, college, and Seminary with above average grades. God got me through it all.
When I was twenty something I read Jeremiah 29:11 and I’ve carried it with me. God told Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
God knew the plans He had for me as well.
God knows the plans He has for you.
We may not understand those plans or what God has called us to do, but if it’s a God’s plan, He will bring us to it and through it. God knows the plans He has for us (you).
He has a plan for your welfare for good and God will give you a future and a hope. That’s a promise you can count on!
Spiritual Practice: Trust God
Tell God you trust the plans He has for you. He WILL carry you.
In God, Deborah
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