“From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praise.” Psalm 113:3
On a sunny Caribbean morning rushing about getting ready for the team, this Psalm was on my mind. Excited to meet the people God was bringing to our island and to see what he would do among us and around us, I thought is was a fitting verse given the name of the church, that they were coming from the west coast to our little place on the Point where you see the sun rise over the sea. From sunrise to sunset, the Lord shall be praised. Seeing God work in so many ways as the week unfolded, hearing of God’s work in the individual stories of each person as they live within God’s great story of redemption, laughing my guts out at times, weeping at others.
Those words, however, of praising and trusting God who is good and faithful, from sunrise to sunset, took on another layer of meaning this week. The doctor, who God graciously sent here for this week, and I were called to the see the baby of a friend. Despite doing what we could, even sending her off-island for further help, this week we read in a church program her sunrise and her sunset, the days of her birth and her death. To attend the wake, to sit together, to cry, to listen to her mother sing at the funeral, to walk down the path along the still sea behind the coffin and up the long hill to the cemetery. Even in these moments, we rely on the love of Jesus, the comfort of His Spirit. So on Good Friday I kept thinking of a Father who knows the suffering and pain of losing a son, who gave his only son, who also watched a walk to a tomb.
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:4-6
My thoughts and prayers are with you continually and I'm hopeful that God will use you in a powerful way to spread the love of Jesus to this mother in her time of sorrow and to be an encouragement to those around you. God Bless you Britt and happy Easter. With Love, Dad
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